From city bins to dairy farms, the race to cut waste and methane is on

Welcome to Top of the COP, a daily recap of the top headlines coming from the Global Climate Action Agenda.

In today’s edition: A new cohort of Zero Waste Districts is announced; Fair Ton’s 1x100 campaign is helping waste pickers measure emissions; cities and farmers tackle methane cuts.

COP31 puts zero waste at the heart of climate action

Waste isn’t usually headline material at a climate summit. At COP31, it is, along with the methane it produces. Both are among the Presidency's top priorities, backed by a global target: reducing the projected increase in global annual municipal solid waste generation by at least 50% by 2035.

Yesterday, we dove into the role of electrification in limiting the overshoot, but energy alone won’t be enough. Methane is a potent warmer: tonne for tonne, it traps 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Much of the world’s methane comes from what we throw away and how we farm. Agriculture produces 42% and waste 20%, largely from livestock and from food and other organic waste rotting in landfills and dumps. And both are heading the wrong way. Under current policies, global methane emissions are on track to be about 5% higher in 2030 than in 2020. Additionally, municipal waste could rise from 2.56 billion tonnes in 2022 to 3.86 billion tonnes by 2050, more than doubling in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Here’s how today’s announcements across the Action Agenda aim to change that, one city and farm at a time.

First cohort of 20 Zero Waste Districts announced

Earlier this year, COP31 Climate High-Level Champion Samed Ağırbaş launched the Istanbul Zero Waste Action Platform, a hub connecting initiatives across the Action Agenda to fast-track waste prevention, circular economy and methane reduction.

Today, the Zero Waste Districts under the Platform announced its first cohort of 20 districts across Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. They include Pakis District in East Java, Indonesia; Abuakwa South in Kyebi, Ghana; and Bey District in Gaziantep, Türkiye.

Why districts? They’re large enough to make shared systems viable, but small enough for the people involved to agree and act. For a full year, districts of about one square kilometre will run proven solutions at real volumes: compost sites, shared washing facilities and repair workshops. Each will then report its results using the same metrics and format, building evidence for public policy. The goal is a second cohort of 100 districts within five years.

“Cities are where climate action must deliver results,” said Ağırbaş. “These districts will deliver measurable climate benefits and, more importantly, create practical models that other cities worldwide can replicate and scale”.

NOW or never: cities tackle methane from food waste

Supporting the Zero Waste Districts is the No Organic Waste (NOW) plan to accelerate solutions. Its central goals are to keep organic waste out of landfills, redirect edible surplus food to people who need it, and to foster circularity.

When organic waste such as food scraps rots in landfills and dumpsites, it releases – you guessed it – methane, the greenhouse gas on everyone’s lips this COP. And rightly so, food loss and waste are responsible for 8-10% of global emissions.

That’s why COP31 Climate High-Level Champion Samed Ağırbaş launched the #OneBillion Challenge yesterday. The campaign aims to turn the one billion meals wasted every day into a global call to action, and to accelerate efforts to halve food waste by 2030.

One of NOW’s flagship initiatives is Lowering Methane Emissions from Organic Waste (LOW-M). It brings together 35 organizations supporting 20 cities to cut methane from food and organic waste, prioritizing actions based on data. Besides strengthening food security, these measures create jobs and improve air quality.

Since COP30 in Belém, five more cities, including Accra and Nairobi, have completed expert-backed plans setting out their priority actions, and six cities have now costed their priorities. They include Zero Waste district hosts Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City – which aims to reduce food waste by 30% and to treat at least 30% of organic waste by 2030. LOW-M aims to reach 40 cities by 2030.

Fair Ton’s 1x100 campaign puts waste pickers at the centre of circular economies

A third part of the NOW plan is making sure waste pickers are formally recognized as part of the global waste system, and credited for collecting almost 60% of all plastic collected worldwide. Fair Ton’s new 1x100 campaign aims to generate the data to make that happen.”

The objective is to reach 100,000 waste pickers worldwide and recover one million tonnes of waste in 400 days, tracking results as they go.

“Before, when people asked me what my contribution was, I would say 40 years of working on the streets. Now I can put a number to it,” said Soledad Mella of the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers.

The project has already placed greenhouse gas calculators with 53 waste-picker organizations in 12 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Kenya, and the Philippines. The calculators let waste pickers measure and show the emissions they avoid through their work: each organization is net-negative and avoids on average 3,639 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent a year. It’s small for now, but if the pilot works it could scale much further through the Action Agenda, with the goal of reaching 500,000 waste pickers across 49 countries.

Farmers deliver emissions cuts through methane mitigation

Cutting methane is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective ways to put the brakes on global warming. Action is already underway in the agricultural sector through a plan to tackle agricultural development and methane mitigation.

In 2022, Danone committed to cutting methane from the fresh milk in its dairy products by 30% by 2030. It was the first food and agriculture company to set a methane-specific target. Four years early, it is at 29.8%.

For example, Danone’s Jornada Flora programme covers 151 supplier farms, which deliver about 65% of the company’s milk in Brazil. Since 2021, participating farms have cut the methane emitted per litre of milk by 42%. Meanwhile, their net margins per cow rose 50% between 2020 and 2024.

“Reducing methane is a critical part of transforming our dairy model and delivering on our climate ambition. As we gather at COP, both the private and public sectors need to continue accelerating and scaling solutions that reduce emissions while strengthening the resilience and economic sustainability of dairy farming,” said Chris Adamo, VP Sustainability, Engagement and Impact, Danone.

Danone’s progress, as part of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance (DMAA), is among the clearest evidence yet that farm methane can be measured and brought down. Today, all 10 DMAA companies collectively representing 31% of the US and 10% of the EU dairy market have disclosed methane emissions for at least one year and are working to reduce them. Nine have published dairy methane action plans and three – Danone, Bel Group, and Clover Sonoma – have set methane-specific greenhouse gas targets, outlining 10-30% methane reduction goals by 2030. Between 2024 and 2025, DMAA companies cut their methane emissions by a net of 192,046 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent.

However, corporate supply chains only reach some of the world's farmers. Smallholder farmers and ranchers, far from multinational buyers, also have great potential to reduce methane emissions with financial and technical support.

This year, Action Agenda partners reported mobilizing more than USD 12 million in grants, philanthropic and public project funding, and corporate carbon-credit purchases. About USD 10 million of that has already been disbursed. The money pays for a mix of work, including payments to farmers adopting lower-emission practices, methane measurement equipment, and field research.

In all, more than 70 organizations and more than 20 countries are now involved, from Kenya and Vietnam to Brazil and Kazakhstan.

Neither effort is yet at the scale the problem demands. However, with partners coming together to scale what works, the argument over farm methane is shifting from whether it can be cut to how to do it faster.

For media enquiries, please contact: christineluby@climatechampions.team and guilhermelarsen@climatechampions.team.