Title: For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem | Climate Central
Headings: For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem
For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem
‘First Best Guess’
What’s in the Emissions
Just a Starting Point

Content: Along with data from the few studies like Yokelson’s, Wiedinmyer used guidelines for calculating trash burning emissions produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine how much waste was being generated and burned, what exactly was in that waste, and what types of chemicals were likely generated. What she came up with was, as the study describes it, “the first comprehensive and consistent estimates of the  global emissions of greenhouse gases, particulate matter, reactive trace gases, and toxic  compounds from open waste burning.” A field worker and the equipment used to measure emissions from burning trash near Mexico City as seen through a shroud of smoke. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Ted Christian
Or, as Wiedinmyer puts it, “it was my first best guess.” What’s in the Emissions
What she found was that some 1.1 billion tons of waste, more than 40 percent of the world’s garbage, is burned in open piles, contributing more emissions than is shown in regional and global inventories. An estimated 40 to 50 percent of the garbage is made up of carbon by mass, which means that carbon dioxide is the major gas emitted by trash burning. Those emissions are dwarfed by others sources on the global scale, such as cars and power plants, amounting to just 5 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions. But the carbon dioxide that comes from trash burning can be a significant source in some countries and regions, and it is one not reflected in the official greenhouse gas inventories for those places.