Priority Climate Action Plan Guide: Organic Waste & Landfill Methane Strategies

The guide outlines how state, local, and tribal governments can utilize CPRG funding to reduce methane emissions by implementing upstream organic waste diversion and downstream landfill gas controls. It emphasizes the use of 20-year global warming potential (GWP) for GHG inventories to highlight the urgency of methane action and details specific policy measures, such as organic waste bans and advanced monitoring technology, to achieve rapid emissions reductions and community benefits.

• Methane is a critical target for near-term warming because it has approximately 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a twenty-year period, and it is responsible for roughly one-third of current warming impacts in the US.
• Municipal landfills are a major source of US methane emissions, contributing over 14% of the total (about 295 million metric tons of CO2e annually), and are often the largest methane source in state and local inventories.
• To maximize GHG reductions, planning grant recipients should employ both upstream measures (waste prevention, food donation, and organics recycling) and downstream measures (strengthening landfill gas capture and reducing fugitive emissions).
• Specific high-impact measures for PCAPs include instituting organic waste bans and updating state landfill regulations; for example, California law mandates a 75% reduction in organic waste disposal by 2025.
• Advanced monitoring and best management practices (BMPs) can significantly reduce emissions; in Pennsylvania, overflights using remote sensing resulted in a 37% reduction in detected emissions from landfills identified as super-emitters.
• Waste sector strategies provide substantial co-benefits for low-income and disadvantaged communities, as 54% of landfills reporting to the GHG Reporting Program have nearby communities that exceed national averages for people of color or low incomes.
• The guide recommends using a 20-year global warming potential (GWP) rather than a 100-year GWP in GHG inventories to avoid understating the potency of methane and the benefits of immediate action.

APA

Garland, E., Blauvelt, K., & Alves, O. (2023). Priority Climate Action Plan Guide: Organic Waste & Landfill Methane Strategies. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/10/landfill_monitoring_memo_3.pdf

Chicago

Garland, Ellie, Katherine Blauvelt, and Olivia Alves. Priority Climate Action Plan Guide: Organic Waste & Landfill Methane Strategies. RMI, 2023. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/10/landfill_monitoring_memo_3.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Garland |first1=Ellie |last2=Blauvelt |first2=Katherine |last3=Alves |first3=Olivia |title=Priority Climate Action Plan Guide: Organic Waste & Landfill Methane Strategies |publisher=RMI |date=6 October 2023 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/10/landfill_monitoring_memo_3.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{garland2023priority, author = {Garland, Ellie and Blauvelt, Katherine and Alves, Olivia}, title = {{Priority Climate Action Plan Guide: Organic Waste \& Landfill Methane Strategies}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2023}, month = oct, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/10/landfill_monitoring_memo_3.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }