Samed Ağırbaş: “COP31 is making it easier to adopt zero waste”

As COP31 puts the focus on turning climate commitments into action, Samed Ağırbaş explains how the Istanbul Platform on Zero Waste for Climate Action aims to connect cities, businesses and communities to cut emissions and scale solutions that work.

For decades, global industry has operated on a linear model: extract raw resources, manufacture goods, and discard what remains. Today, the climate and economic liabilities of that approach are becoming impossible to overlook.

From the energy required to replace millions of tons of discarded steel and concrete, to the estimated one billion meals lost or wasted daily across the globe, systemic inefficiency across supply chains accounts for a substantial share of global emissions. Curbing those losses represents one of the most direct, actionable avenues for near-term mitigation and urban resilience.

Ahead of COP31, Climate Champion High-Level Samed Ağırbaş is leading the rollout of the Istanbul Platform on Zero Waste for Climate Action. We spoke with Ağırbaş about how the platform connects pilots in cities like Yokohama, and why circularity is essential to meeting global climate goals.

According to Ağırbaş, “it is about how societies organize themselves to live, produce, consume, renew and review their habits, and prosper with the resources that we have.”

Can you explain what zero waste means and how it affects people’s lives and climate change?

Zero waste is more than just managing the waste that is generated. In fact, waste management is the last ladder in this approach. Practically, it is about how societies organize themselves to live, produce, consume, renew and review their habits, and prosper with the resources that we have.

Waste is sometimes treated as a technical issue that belongs to municipal service departments. But when you look at the numbers and the impact on people’s lives, it becomes clear that waste is a climate issue.

Take food for example. Nearly one-fifth of the food available to consumers is wasted and approximately 13 per cent of food is lost before it reaches retail. Meanwhile, methane is responsible for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since the Industrial Revolution, and the waste sector is one of its largest human-caused sources.

When we reduce food and organic waste, we cut methane emissions. In supply chains, a circular economy increases productivity. This requires preventing waste at every opportunity – from extraction to use – and keeping materials in use for as long as possible. That means less pollution, cleaner neighborhoods, more jobs, and resources that remain valuable instead of becoming waste.

The Istanbul Platform on Zero Waste for Climate Action was designed to connect initiatives and accelerate climate action. How will it work?

The platform serves as a hub, connecting existing initiatives and coalitions across food systems, cities, industry, methane reduction, nature, biodiversity, health and sustainable development. I like to think of it as a bridge between climate ambition and implementation, fast-tracking waste prevention and circularity.

This architecture allows the implementation of solutions preventing waste at every opportunity, across sectors and COP cycles. The objective is not to create another isolated platform. This is about making it easier for communities, cities, businesses and countries to adopt and maximize zero waste action.

Zero waste is also a powerful accelerator of the Global Climate Action Agenda. Of the 119 Plans to Accelerate Solutions, 24 are directly linked to waste. That means, for example, less use of plastics and marine litter, reuse of construction materials, food-loss prevention, and methane mitigation in agriculture.

Cities, communities, businesses and countries across the Action Agenda will be connected under the Platform. Through technical support and progress being showcased and measured, methane emissions can be reduced, industrial transformation accelerated, urban resilience improved, and nature and biodiversity will be protected.

How does the Istanbul Platform on Zero Waste accelerate the implementation of the Global Climate Action Agenda?

Implementation of solutions must reach people on the ground through a fair, accessible and inclusive process.

We are already seeing clear signals of progress. For example, on food and waste: the No Organic Waste plan has created composting hubs to reduce methane emissions, and foodbank networks to recover 20 million tonnes of surplus food annually. The Global FoodBanking Network is working to feed more than 40 million people annually while reducing up to 1.3 billion tonnes of food loss and waste.

The Istanbul Platform harnesses the best practices and solutions across the Action Agenda.

What are the biggest gaps that the platform will help to close?

The platform helps to avoid fragmentation. I meet daily with leaders of governments, businesses, youth and communities. There are many good initiatives led by these different actors, but they are dispersed. Now we can place these solutions under one umbrella.

A mayor from a city in Asia can access a solution from Latin America. Communities in Africa will be able to give visibility and scale to their zero waste actions. It is about maximizing what is already working, exchanging knowledge, creating finance opportunities and impacting people’s lives.

By connecting these efforts with the broader climate action agenda, local successes will be scaled, strengthening commitments, partnerships and implementation. That means transforming fragmentation into collaboration, and into real-economy implementation.

You mentioned that cities and other stakeholders will be able to learn from each other. Can you share an example?

Just a few weeks ago at Climate Week NYC, we heard from representatives in Yokohama, Japan who are eager to showcase their solutions through the Istanbul Platform to other cities and communities. In the last two decades, they’ve built a strategy where citizens act as co-creators of circularity, not simply consumers. Over 15,000 educational workshops for residents were held in the last two decades. Since 2001, they’ve seen a reduction in waste by nearly 50 per cent, and three of the city’s seven waste incineration plants were closed.

Yokohama also helped to start the Asian Circular Cities Declaration (ACCD) and was the first city to sign it. Today, the ACCD connects 43 cities in 11 countries with a total population of more than 82 million people.

In recognition of these efforts, Yokohama was selected this year as one of the United Nations 20 cities towards zero waste, along with Accra in Ghana, Bologna in Italy, Florianópolis in Brazil, and others.

Cities hold many of the solutions and cannot create change alone. Our task is to connect those solutions with people, partners, finance and data.

Is the Global Zero Waste Districts Initiative complementary to this strategy?

A district is a boundary set by a city, of about a square kilometre. It is large enough to make shared systems viable, and small enough for the people involved to agree and act. The Zero Waste Districts initiative is a cooperation platform where cities, businesses, communities and funders take zero waste from plans to implementation, at neighborhood scale. This way, organics can go to compost, reusables to washing systems, broken items to repair, using a shared infrastructure already in place.

Prevention first is the central strategy, supported by four common workstreams: organic waste, reuse and repair, alternatives to plastics and direct support for waste pickers.

Currently, 2.1 billion tonnes of municipal waste are generated worldwide every year, and 38 per cent of it is food. That’s the challenge in front of us.

In the first cohort, nine districts are running in four countries: Malaysia, Chile, Brazil and Kenya. We expect to achieve 20 districts by the end of the year.

District-level solutions are the kind of climate action I believe people can understand because they can see it and it can be scaled.

COP31 will happen in a moment of climate shocks all over the globe - El Niño, extreme heat waves, floods in Nepal. What would be a major outcome of COP31?

I would like to see a COP that makes solutions easier to implement, with zero waste becoming a visible climate solution. When we see communities facing floods, extreme heat and other climate shocks, we must remember that climate action is not just about targets and commitments. It is about protecting people, their homes, their livelihoods and their futures.

COP31 must build on the progress of previous COPs, accelerating delivery at scale, turning commitments into practical action, and ensuring that solutions reach the people and places that need them most.

And I believe zero waste can be a major part of that response. By reducing waste, preventing food loss and keeping resources in use, we can cut methane emissions, strengthen food systems and help communities use their resources more effectively. These solutions may not prevent every climate disaster, but they can contribute to more resilient communities and more sustainable ways of living.

Ultimately, success should be measured not by the number of announcements, but by tangible results: communities more resilient and better prepared for climate impacts, stronger food systems, reduced waste and solutions that improve people's lives.