As COP31 comes to Turkey, satellites reveal a landfill methane problem

Detailed summary

SEYMEN, Turkey, Nov 7 - In the countryside west of Istanbul, trucks line up to empty mixed household waste from the city of 16 million people onto a vast landscape of decomposing…

SEYMEN, Turkey, Nov 7 - In the countryside west of Istanbul, trucks line up to empty mixed household waste from the city of 16 million people onto a vast landscape of decomposing rubbish, where landfill gas is captured to generate electricity at a nearby plant.

But far above the seagulls circling the waste, satellites detect what the plant has failed to capture: methane escaping at a rate that ranks it among the world’s largest recorded landfill emitters.

Turkey hosts COP31 in Antalya from November 9 to 20 and has made methane reduction a priority for the climate summit.

Methane is the biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2) and is over 80 times more potent than CO2 in its first 20 years in the air. Sharp cuts could therefore slow warming relatively quickly.

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