At COP31, Turkey pushes zero-waste plan to curb climate change

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — As world leaders gathered for United Nations climate talks in the Turkish resort town of Antalya on Wednesday, host Turkey urged countries to commit to a zero-waste initiative aimed at reducing emissions and helping get global efforts to curb climate change back on track.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan touted his country's progress on recycling, saying its rate had risen from about 13% in 2017, when the zero waste movement began, to about 40% by the end of 2025.

"Some 90 million tons of waste have been brought back into our economy,” Erdogan told the leaders' summit. “We’ll not stop here and we will continue working and making every effort until we achieve the goal of zero waste."

Turkey has outlined 10 priorities for this year’s climate talks, known as COP31 , with a pledge to accelerate electrification and the zero-waste initiatives emerging as major talking points during the opening days of the conference.

Turkish first lady Emine Erdogan, who attended Wednesday's talks, has been a driving force behind the zero-waste initiative, which aims to reduce methane emissions, cut food waste and promote a circular economy in which materials are reused and recycled.

“Recovered materials can be cheaper when reliable supplies, efficient processing and nearby demand outweigh the costs of collection, sorting and transport,” said Samed Agirbas, president of the nonprofit Zero Waste Foundation and a COP31 high-level climate champion.

If implemented, energy experts say the initiatives could slow global warming and reduce the environmental footprint of renewable energy technologies, like solar panels and batteries. But there is still a risk these climate ambitions may fall flat.

Conference agreements are often nonbinding and past hosts have been criticized for failing to follow through on promises. Turkey also faces scrutiny over its own climate record.

“The Zero Waste target is a good target. It definitely needs to be supported with concrete measures and further action,” said Berk Butan, who heads the waste campaign for Greenpeace Turkey. “But fundamentally, we also need to recognize its shortcomings.”

As the second biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide, the reduction of methane emissions could significantly slow global warming, according to the U.N. During the first three days of the climate talks, leaders repeatedly called for urgent climate action.

The U.N. recently had to readjust a decades-old goal of limiting the rise of global temperatures because the world was blowing past previous thresholds.

While Turkey wants countries to commit to reducing methane emissions, it has not signed the Global Methane Pledge. Launched at the 2021 climate talks in Glasgow, the initiative aims to reduce methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.

Turkey is also the world’s fifth-biggest emitter of methane from solid waste, according to nonprofit emissions tracker Climate TRACE.

“Methane emissions from waste disposal are an important challenge,” said Agirbas, with the Zero Waste Foundation.

A circular economy — an economic model that generally prioritizes recycling and other regenerative approaches that create less waste— would help reduce emissions, but not every country has the resources to take such steps.

Ke Wang, an energy expert at the WRI's Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, said that this is “a vital strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

But recycling food waste is difficult because it decomposes quickly, making separation and processing expensive. Collecting and transporting wet, smelly food waste also requires specialized logistics and infrastructure that many countries lack.

“Waste and food loss account for almost 10% of total emissions, so we need to integrate these actions,” Adalberto Maluf, a top official in Brazil’s environment ministry, told The Associated Press.

The recycling of already-mined materials is key to reducing the reliance on mining, according to experts, which will only become more important as the world relies more on critical mineral-dependent renewable technologies.

The International Energy Agency estimates that scaling up recycling could lower the need for new mining by between 25% and 40% by 2050.

Most countries don’t recycle critical materials because it’s cheaper to mine them. The technology and infrastructure needed to recycle these materials are also concentrated in a handful of nations, like China. The European Union and the U.S. will likely only have the capacity to recycle 30% of their raw materials by 2040, according to the IEA.

“We must do a better job with our materials retrieval, reuse and recycling,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. She stressed the need to create incentives for “retrieving the materials, taking things apart, being able to reuse them again in a circular way.”

Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India, Milko from Islamabad, Pakistan and Delgado from Bangkok.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .