Green

Good News on Waste Emissions

A Brussels based European Environment Agency (EEA) report has delivered some good news in relation to European waste emission levels. The 634 page report gives an overview of the period ranging from 1990 to 2007 and enables all interested parties to understand the situation at hand.

European waste accounts for 2.6 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and over the seventeen year period analyzed, a thirty nine percent decrease has been achieved. Waste disposal on land was the largest contributor to emissions, but that too had fallen forty six percent in the specified period. In the EU-15, sixty five percent of greenhouse gasses emanated from waste and of that, methane emissions from stood at 1.7 percent. The UK and Germany were the biggest producers of methane at 29.1 percent and 11.8 percent, but those figures represented the biggest improvements in any of the member states. The UK achieved a fifty nine percent reduction and Germany achieved a whopping seventy seven percent in methane emission reductions.

The drive towards reducing the amount of biodegradable materials ending up in landfills by EU member states has been identified as the primary reason for the drop. The total drop in that sector stood at thirty five percent. The UK was singled out as the best nation in methane recovery, as they recovered seventy three percent of all methane produced in the country in 2007.

The report suggests that the is EU on track to achieve the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol .