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What Does the Paris Climate Agreement Say about Waste?
Feb 18, 2016 Eric Lombardi
The world has been heatedly debating the significance of the Paris climate agreement since it was
published in December. Some see it as a historic moment of global cooperation while others call it a
landmark failure to hold countries truly accountable for their climate impacts and nothing more than
empty words. Whatever one thinks, it does appear to be true what the Guardian newspaper said in
the U.K., “The whole world agreed, we need to stop delaying and start getting serious about
preventing a climate crisis. We’ve turned the corner; climate denial is no longer being taken
seriously.”
Waste (finally) mattered in Paris
Skim through the official Paris Agreement and you won’t find the word “waste” even mentioned. But
if you had tuned into the side rooms, the street protests, formal meetings and the negotiations where
the real work was being done to figure out how we’re going to actually meet the Paris goals and you
would find the subjects of recycling, composting, minimizing waste and the concept of Zero Waste
emerged as priority solutions for a carbon-free future.
David Newman, the head of the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), attended these
COP21 meetings and was exhilarated by “how many donor countries said how waste was the critical
issue to tackle and especially reducing organics going to landfill. After years of fighting for a seat at
the table, they proclaimed ‘Waste counts!’ and that the contribution of our industry is recognized for
what it is- equally as important as renewable energy, electric cars, solar panels and so on.”
This is worth repeating: Reducing waste, recycling and composting are equally as important as other
leading climate solutions. Here’s why:
1. Energy use and emissions related to raw material extraction (think giant trucks and bulldozers) are
virtually eliminated with recycling and reuse;
2. Energy use is greatly reduced in the manufacturing process when products are made from recycled
materials rather than virgin materials;
3. Not disrupting ecosystems in the hunt for virgin resources means more forests, trees and other
vegetation are left intact, allowing them to absorb carbon dioxide;
4. Stopping the landfilling of organic materials eliminates a huge source of methane into the
atmosphere;
5. Composting organic discards creates a nutrient-rich soil amendment that helps store carbon in the
soils.
Business as usual isn’t the answer.
Two important take-away themes emerged from Paris: the need for urgency and prioritizing REAL
solutions. Time is not on our side to delay the worst effects of climate change. There is a growing
focus on short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) that are dramatic in their negative impacts but can be
reduced quickly and cost-effectively to curb their most dangerous effects. Methane is one of the four
priority short-term gases, and landfills are a top cause of methane emissions.
For the Big Trash companies, the call to reduce emissions from waste is seen as an opportunity to
sell “improved” waste incinerators and build more “modern” landfills. The problem is that both these
technologies still depend upon huge amounts of mixed waste to burn or bury as the foundation of
their business plans.
That means we can’t settle for landfill gas capture systems at landfills as the best answer. The real
solution is to stop methane emissions from landfills by keeping organic materials out. This means
composting food scraps and yard waste, and better paper recycling.
Further, we need to eliminate policies that financially reward trash incineration by:
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Ending climate financing for waste incineration, which emits more pollution per unit of energy than
coal-fired power plants
Suspending all renewable energy credits and subsidies for waste disposal, including landfills and
incinerators
Moving away from biomass burning in favor of composting which can store carbon in our soils
Our work is a priority solution.
The Paris agreement is an important step forward, but the hard work really hasn’t even begun. It’s
up to local communities to implement Zero Waste solutions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG’s)
emissions, and we need to start pressuring the Federal government to establish national goals for
waste reduction and resource recovery.
Real climate solutions move us toward a circular economy—one that doesn’t accept any material as
“waste.” Recycling, composting and waste reduction are proven, low-cost and ready to implement
climate solutions. The world is eager for answers and it’s time our industry delivers.
Eric Lombardi is the Director of Eco-Cycle Solutions. Find videos, tools and more to use Zero Waste
strategies to address climate change at ecocyclesolutionshub.org.
What the Recycling Industry Can Bring to Climate Change
Discussions
Oct 15, 2015 Eric Lombardi
The unfolding string of chaotic climate events around the world is disturbing to anyone paying
attention, but as a father I can tell you that it is absolutely terrifying to our children who are old
enough to understand what is happening. The generation that is coming of age at this time, the
millennials, are some of the smartest and globally-aware young adults that the human race has ever
produced. That is both good and bad news as it relates to climate change and what the world is
doing about it.
There is zero time to waste since delaying climate cooling solutions today only increases the price
tag in the future–a burden we shouldn’t be passing on to future generations. The time to act is now,
and we need solutions that are ready to go, cost-effective and impactful.
Fast, cost-effective and proven
That’s what we as a recycling industry can bring to the climate discussions: Proven strategies that
can be implemented today at reasonable costs with meaningful impacts. We can’t solve the whole
problem because there is a lot of long-term large-scale work to be done on our energy and
transportation systems, but investing in zero waste today is one of the best short-term strategies that
helps buy time to work on these longer-term problems.
Unfortunately, the recycling industry has been excluded from the climate conversation, save for a
small foothold around methane. In most local greenhouse gas inventories, “waste” is only 2-5
percent of the problem, so it doesn’t look like a sizeable part of the problem or the solution. But that’s
only because we’re calculating it incorrectly. We’re only measuring the methane contribution from
landfills and not the emissions from making and transporting products and their packaging.
We need to get behind a new climate accounting system that looks beyond landfill emissions and
measures the impact of producing, consuming and disposing of all our stuff. It’s time for
consumption-based accounting.
Game-changer: Consumption-based accounting
We know that consumption affects climate change: The bigger your house, the more stuff you buy,
the bigger your climate footprint.
Yet most greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories don't measure the impacts of consumption. Nor do they
measure the benefits of recycling and composting, which help reduce GHG emissions. For example,
a community that recycles 100 percent of the scrap metal in their town, which would save a huge
amount of energy and significantly reduce carbon emissions in producing the next metal product,
doesn’t get any credit for this impactful program. We just aren’t measuring the right things if we’re
only looking at emission sources like smokestacks while ignoring all the energy that is not burned
thanks to recycling. According to Dr. Jeffrey Morris, a resource economist, around four barrels of
energy are saved for every ton of municipal solid waste (MSW) that is recycled.
The EPA published a groundbreaking report in 2009 that described how “materials management and
food systems” in America are responsible for 42 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Let that
sink in for a moment: The way we manufacture, use and dispose of our “stuff,” is responsible for
nearly half of our climate impact.
Since that big news, some communities are starting to change the way they look at consumption and
waste in their climate action plans. Places like San Francisco and Washington’s King County have
published consumption-based inventories and are changing the conversation about how zero waste
can be a short-term climate solution priority.
Portland, Ore., is leading the pack. Their 2015 Climate Action Plan offers both a traditional GHG
inventory and a consumption-based inventory. As a result of looking at their emissions from both
angles, Portland has more options on the table, and zero waste actions are included as important
short-term priorities. A few of the climate action steps in Portland include expanding business and
multifamily recycling, promoting reuse opportunities like thrift stores, fix-it clinics and tool libraries, as
well as product stewardship. The city is aiming to reduce waste generation by 33 percent and has
seen per capita generation drop 10 percent below 1996 levels.
How you can get started
The counting of “consumption emissions” is still in its infancy and there’s no standard protocol for
communities to use. That’s the first thing we need to change on the local, state and national levels.
We also need to change the conversation about greenhouse gas emissions and what is it that is
driving those power plants and truck tailpipes so hard? Eco-Cycle Solution’s new 6-minute video,
The Zero Waste-Climate Solution, helps you understand the issue and introduce zero waste into
your local climate discussions. And visit the West Coast Climate Forum for a great series of
webinars and background reports on climate and materials management.
The escalating climate crisis is enough to make a person feel overwhelmed and helpless–but for
waste management professionals it is also an opportunity to be part of the solution by recreating our
industry into a “resource management” industry. It’s time that we sit at the grown-ups table in the
fight against climate change. Zero Waste offers fast, cost-effective, ready-to-implement solutions to
help reducing greenhouse gases quickly and in large numbers. The world needs to hear our good
news stories and consumption-based accounting will help us tell it.
Eric Lombardi is the executive director of Eco-Cycle International and has had a long career in
community resource conservation, social enterprise development and non-profit (NGO)
organizational management since 1980.