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Tag: Methane emissions

UK to join global coalition to combat food waste

Posted on by dishanth
UK to join global coalition to combat food waste

The UK has this week confirmed its intention to join the UNFSS, which commits members to halve food waste globally by 2030. The UK joins the likes of Italy, Australia and the US in becoming a member.

An estimated 9.5 million tones of food are wasted every year in the UK, while more broadly, more than one-third of all produced food is wasted. The UK will share its expertise, namely through the research and workings of WRAP to help combat food waste at home and abroad.

Minister Rebecca Pow said: “The UK, where food waste has fallen 21% per person since 2007, is rightly recognised as a global leader in tackling both domestic and international food waste. Joining the UNFSS Coalition will enable us to work further with other countries to solve this enormous issue.”

The commitment forms part of the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan to build a “truly circular and sustainable economy”.

The Government published its food strategy in June 2022. The UK Government has maintained that the strategy does address the biggest systemic challenges across the food value chain, including rising food costs, childhood hunger, public health and environmental sustainability.

To this latter point, agriculture was the source of 10% of the UK’s emissions in 2019 and 47% of England’s methane emissions specifically in 2019, according to official Government figures. This makes it a key challenge on the road to net-zero. With 70% of England’s land used for farming, farming approaches also have a major knock-on impact on the state of nature across the country.

More than 200 large food businesses already measure their food waste as part of the WRAP-IGD Food Waste Reduction Roadmap and the strategy is consulting on ways to improve reporting on this topic for larger businesses.

Commenting on the announcement, Liz Goodwin, senior fellow and director of Food Loss and Waste at the World Resources Institute, said: “The UK has been a clear leader in tackling food loss and waste for many years, so I am delighted that it is joining the Food is Never Waste Coalition where it will be a clear role model for others and will help promote focus on this important issue.

“We are now just seven years away from 2030 and it is imperative that we all scale up our efforts to reduce food loss and waste, which is essential if we are to meet climate agreement targets and create a sustainable, resilient food system.”

 

Disposal discretions

The announcement is timely. New research based on a survey from Waitrose warns that almost three million households across the UK may not be disposing of food waste responsibly.

The survey found that while 61% of UK households acknowledge that food waste is damaging to the environment, just 21% have access to curbside food waste collection and therefore throw leftover food into general waste streams.

Almost half (43%) claimed that they mistrust their local authorities to deal with waste responsibility, while 29% claimed that separating food waste was “too much effort”.

John Lewis Partnership’s director of ethics and sustainability, Marija Rompani said: “When we throw food away, we waste the precious resources it’s taken to grow, package and transport it – and as it rots in landfill, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide.

“The simple action of throwing food in the bin is therefore more damaging to our planet than people often realise. Ideally, we should strive to eliminate food waste entirely but if necessary, it’s critical that households that have access to curbside food waste collection actually use it.”

 

 

 

 

Source edie

 

MARS: UN unveils plans to track methane emissions from space

Posted on by dishanth
MARS: UN unveils plans to track methane emissions from space

Announced as part of the decarbonisation-themed day in the COP27 Presidency agenda, the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) will be operated as part of the UN Environment Programmes International Methane Emissions Observatory. It has secured funding from the European Commission, US Government and the Bezos Earth Fund.

Data collected by MARS will be publicly available, in what is believed to be a world first. Additionally, major emissions events will be relayed to those with the power to step in with remediation, including national governments, states and corporates. These organisations will be able to ask the MARS team to provide advice.

Data will be collected from the energy sector in the first instance. Energy production is the world’s largest source of methane, which is often generated by flaring at oil and gas facilities or released via leaks in the sector. In time, data on methane from coal, waste and agriculture will be captured. Agriculture is the world’s second-largest source of methane, primarily from livestock and rice. As such, it will be these two agriculture sub-sectors which MARS focuses on.

Methane has been steadily rising up the climate agenda in recent years as science has improved. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded, within the past 18 months, that at least a quarter of global heating to date is attributable to methane.

 

 

Global methane pledge

Spearheaded by the US, many of the world’s highest methane emitting nations have signed up to the ‘Global Methane Pledge’. This entails reducing methane emissions by 30% by 2030 against a 2019 or 2020 baseline (some nations have chosen 2019 as a baseline as emissions dipped in 2020 due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. In total, 130 nations and states have signed up for the Pledge.

The UN Environment Programme’s executive director Inger Andersen said that MARS represents “a big step in helping governments and companies deliver on this important short-term climate goal”. “Reducing methane emissions can make a big and rapid difference, as this gas leaves the atmosphere far quicker than carbon dioxide,” Andersen added.

The US Climate Envoy, John Kerry, and President, Joe Biden, were both on the ground in Sharm El-Sheikh today (11 November) to deliver speeches. Both of them emphasised the importance of cutting methane emissions this decade to give the world the best chance of meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C pathway.

Earlier this year, the US partnered with the EU to set out joint measures to address methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed today that it is bringing forward new proposed standards to bring energy sector methane down by up to 87% by 2030, against a 2005 baseline. If implemented in full, the EPA claims, the proposals will mitigate 36 million tonnes of methane between 2023 and 2035, equivalent to all of the greenhouse gas emissions of all of the US’s coal-fired power plants in 2020.

Internationally, the US signed a new joint declaration on reducing emissions from the fossil fuel sector, with a focus on methane. The other supporters of the declaration are the EU, the UK, Japan, Canada, Norway and Singapore.

Under the declaration, these nations have pledged to bring forward new policies and measures to eliminate venting and flaring and to force oil and gas companies to improve leak detection and repair efforts. Nations will either require or “strongly incentivise” nations from which they import fossil energies to reduce their emissions, as well.

 

 

Source edie

California tackles food waste with largest recycling program in US

Posted on by dishanth
California tackles food waste with largest recycling program in US

California will soon enact the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the US in January, an effort designed to dramatically cut down on organic waste in landfills and reduce the state’s methane emissions.

When food scraps such as banana peels and leftover veggies and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Organic material such as food and yard waste makes up a fifth of the state’s methane emissions and half of everything in California landfills, according to CalRecycle.

California plans to start converting food waste into compost or energy in order to avoid these emissions, becoming the second state to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.

“This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” said Rachel Wagoner, the director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.

Most California residents will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.

 

A truck unloads organic waste to be used for composting at a facility in Woodland, California. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

 

Recycling food waste “is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change”, Wagoner said.

The effort reflects growing recognition about the role food waste plays in damaging the environment. Up to 40% of food in the US is wasted, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

A handful of states and countries, including France, have passed laws requiring grocery stores and other large businesses to recycle or donate excess food to charities, but California’s program targets households and businesses. In 2016, California passed a law aimed at reducing methane emissions by significantly cutting down on discarded food.

Starting in January, all cities and counties that provide trash services are supposed to have food recycling programs in place and grocery stores must donate edible food that otherwise would be thrown away to food banks or similar organizations.

“There’s just no reason to stick this material in a landfill, it just happens to be cheap and easy to do so,” said Ned Spang, faculty lead for the Food Loss and Waste Collaborative at the University of California, Davis.

Vermont, home to 625,000 people compared with California’s nearly 40 million, is the only other state that bans residents from throwing their food waste in the trash. Under a law that took effect in July 2020, residents can compost the waste in their yards, opt for curbside pick up or drop it at waste stations. Seattle and San Francisco have similar programs.

 

Students discard their uneaten lunch into a food waste can at an elementary school in Connecticut. Photograph: Dave Zajac/AP

 

Under California’s new law, the state must cut organic waste in landfills by 75% from 2014 levels by 2025, or from about 23m tons to 5.7m tons.

Most local governments will allow homeowners and apartment dwellers to dump excess food into yard waste bins, with some providing countertop containers to hold the scraps for a few days before taking it outside. Some areas can get exemptions for parts of the law, such as rural locations where bears rummage through trash cans.

The food waste will go to facilities for composting or for turning it into energy through anaerobic digestion, a process that creates biogas that can be used like natural gas for heating and electricity.

But only a fifth of California’s composting facilities may accept food waste, and they face a strict permitting process to take food waste alongside traditional green waste such as leaves.

The state also set a 2025 goal of diverting 20% of food that would otherwise go to landfills to feed people in need. Supermarkets must start donating their excess food in January and hotels, restaurants, hospitals, schools and large event venues will start doing so in 2024. The donation part of the law will contribute toward a federal goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.

Davis, California, already has a mandatory food recycling program. Joy Klineberg puts coffee grounds, fruit rinds and cooking scraps into a metal bin labeled “compost” on her countertop. When preparing dinners, she empties excess food from the cutting board into the bin.

Every few days, she dumps the contents into her green waste bin outside, which is picked up and sent to a county facility. Unpleasant countertop bin smells haven’t been a problem, she said.

 

Joy Klineberg lives in Davis, California, where residents are already required to recycle their food waste. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

 

“All you’re changing is where you’re throwing things, it’s just another bin,” she said. “It’s really easy, and it’s amazing how much less trash you have.”

Implementing similar programs in bigger cities is more challenging.

Los Angeles and San Diego, the state’s two most populous cities, which together account for about one of every eight Californians, are among those that won’t have their programs ready for all households next month.

That’s because it takes time to buy the necessary equipment, such as green waste bins for households that don’t already have them for yard waste and to set up facilities to take the material. Trash collection fees will go up in many places.

CalRecycle also wants to focus more on education and less on punishment. Governments can avoid penalties by self-reporting to the state by March if they don’t have programs in place and outlining plans for starting them. Cities that refuse to comply could eventually be fined up to $10,000 a day.

Ken Prue, the deputy director of San Diego’s environmental services department, said the city put nearly $9m in this year’s budget to buy more waste bins, countertop containers and trucks to haul the additional waste.

Prue hopes San Diego residents will quickly realize the importance of recycling food waste after the program starts next summer.

“Hopefully before they know it, it becomes second nature,” he said.

 

 

Source The Guardian

Cutting methane emissions is quickest way to slow global heating – UN report

Posted on by dishanth
Cutting methane emissions is quickest way to slow global heating – UN report

Fossil fuels, cattle and rotting waste produce greenhouse gas responsible for 30% of global heating

Slashing methane emissions is vital to tackling the climate crisis and rapidly curbing the extreme weather already hitting people across the world today, according to a new UN report.

In 2020 there was a record rise in the amount of the powerful greenhouse gas emitted by the fossil fuel industry, cattle and rotting waste. Cutting it is the strongest action available to slow global heating in the near term, Inger Andersen, the UN’s environment chief, said.

The report found that methane emissions could be almost halved by 2030 using existing technology and at reasonable cost. A significant proportion of the actions would actually make money, such as capturing methane gas leaks at fossil fuel sites.

 

A cattle feedlot in Colorado: 42% of human-caused methane emissions come from agriculture, including burping livestock and manure. Photograph: Jim West/Alamy

 

Achieving the cuts would avoid nearly 0.3C of global heating by 2045 and keep the world on track for the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C. Methane cuts also immediately reduce air pollution and would prevent many premature deaths and lost crops.

Methane is 84 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and has caused about 30% of global heating to date. But it breaks down in the atmosphere within about a decade, unlike CO2, which remains in the air for centuries.

Cutting carbon emissions remains essential in ending the climate emergency, but some experts liken reducing CO2 in the air to the slow process of stopping a supertanker, whereas lowering methane is like cutting the engine on a speedboat and bringing it to a rapid halt.

Prof Drew Shindell, at Duke University, who led the UN report, said: “We’re seeing so many aspects of climate change manifest themselves in the real world faster than our projections,” such as increasing heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and intense storms. “We don’t have a lot we can do about that, other than this powerful lever on near-term climate of reducing methane. We should do this for the wellbeing of everybody on the planet over the next 20 to 30 years.”

“Methane emissions are increasing faster now than at any time in nearly 40 years of the observational record,” he said. “Despite Covid … methane shot upwards – it’s going in the wrong direction very, very rapidly.”

 

Intentional and unintentional leaks of methane from fossil fuel drilling sites has contributed to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

 

The surge is partly due to the increased use of fossil fuels, especially gas produced by fracking, Shindell said, and probably more emissions from wetlands as they heat up.

“It’s vital to reduce methane for the sake of near-term climate change,” Shindell said “But it’s also vital to reduce CO2 for the sake of long-term climate change. The good news is that most of the required actions [to cut methane] also bring health and financial benefits.”

Andersen said: “Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years. We need international cooperation to urgently reduce methane emissions as much as possible this decade.”

The report produced by the UN and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition found that 42% of human-caused methane emissions come from agriculture, mostly from burping livestock, its manure, and paddy fields. Intentional and unintentional leaks of methane from fossil fuel drilling sites, coalmines and pipelines produce 36% of the total and waste dumps cause another 18%.

The report found feasible and cost-effective methane cuts of 60% could be made from fossil fuel operations by stopping the venting of unwanted gas and properly sealing equipment. Waste sites could cut about 35% by reducing the organic waste sent to landfill sites and through better sewage treatment.

The estimated methane cuts from agriculture by 2030 were lower at 25%. “You can change the feed to cows and the way you manage the herds, but these things are fairly small,” said Shindell. “You could make very great inroads into methane emissions by dietary change [eating less meat], but we are just not that sure how quickly that will happen.”

Other measures not specifically targeting methane can still cut emissions of the gas, the report said, such as reducing the demand for fossil gas by increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency, and wasting less food.

The report is the first to include the health and other benefits of cutting methane. The gas causes ground-level ozone pollution and a cut of 45% by 2030 would prevent 260,000 early deaths a year, the report said. More than 13,000 of those would be in the US and 4,200 in the UK. Ozone also damages crops and the methane cut would prevent 25m tonnes of wheat, rice, maize and soy being lost annually.

“Seldom in the world of climate change action is there a solution so stuffed with win-wins,” said Prof Dave Reay, at the University of Edinburgh, who was not part of the report team. A recent scientific study concluded that methane cuts can also “reduce the likelihood of passing climate tipping points”.

World leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Alberto Fernández of Argentina and Nguyen Xuan Phuc of Vietnam all called for cuts in methane emissions at the Leaders Summit on Climate hosted by the US in April. Shortly after, Joe Biden moved to reinstate limits on emissions from oil and gas fields that had been cancelled by Donald Trump.

Jonathan Banks, at the US-based Clean Air Task Force, said: “We desperately need a win on climate change and methane abatement provides an opportunity for a real near-term win. Lately all we’ve been doing is slamming our heads against the wall – society can’t keep doing that for forever.”

 

 

Source The Guardian