The implications for our new household waste system for carbon emissions have been rather ignored, not least by the "Friends of the Earth" campaigners who opposed the strategy tooth and nail.
We employed a specialist company to analyse the effects of switching to a variety of systems. If were to rerun this process today, we would probably have a slightly different answer because the West London Waste Authroity now has a more sophisticated understanding of the composition of household waste in Brent. Similarly, once the new system starts going in October our understanding will rapidly increase again, but at the moment the best figures we have are the ones published in August 2010.
These use carbon dioxide equivalent as a measure. This equates a number of pollutants using a kilogram of carbon dioxide as a yardstick. Thus, a kilogram of methane is equivalent to 23 kilograms of carbon dioxide and so on.
The study suggested that carrying on with the old system would produce almost 13 million kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. The new system will reduce this by about 7.3 million; more than half the total, and more than the 25% cut in carbon emissions from the Council's own operation that I blogged on Saturday about.
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