1. Goal: Climate Protection
Reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Promote the efficient use of energy and plan for the County’s long-term energy needs.
c. Waste Management Indicator
Source: Montgomery County Department of Public Works, Division of Solid Waste Management
The products we make, buy, use and throw away all generate greenhouse gases. We can manage our municipal solid waste – our landfills and recycling – to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a hierarchy of techniques for managing solid waste in an environmentally sound way. Montgomery County follows that hierarchy and promotes source reduction, including reuse, as the preferred method to reduce volume, followed by recycling and composting. Waste that cannot be managed by those methods is disposed of through waste-to-energy incineration or in landfills.
Source reduction and recycling can reduce greenhouse emissions at the manufacturing stage, reduce consumption of forest products and fossil fuels from packaging and transportation, and avoid landfill methane emissions. Combustion of remaining waste allows energy recovery to displace fossil fuel-generated electricity from utilities, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the utility sector and landfill methane emissions. Diverting organic materials from landfills also reduces methane emissions.
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