Waste and resource management will feature prominently at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, this November, with proposals covering waste prevention, methane reduction and greater use of recovered materials. For professionals navigating domestic policy, contracts and operational pressures, understanding how the conference works helps explain where its influence could be felt.
Türkiye’s Zero Waste initiative, launched under First Lady Emine Erdoğan’s leadership in 2017, provides the political background. COP31 offers an opportunity to connect that attention with policies, investment and practical delivery.
Negotiations, national commitments and the Action Agenda
COP is the annual conference of governments participating in the UN climate convention. Through its formal negotiations, governments agree decisions on matters such as climate finance, adaptation and the rules for reporting emissions and progress. These decisions shape the international framework within which countries act.
Countries set out their own climate commitments through Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, submitted under the Paris Agreement and updated every five years. Each country determines its contribution rather than negotiating its targets with other governments. Specific measures on prevention, collection, treatment and methane reduction provide a clearer basis for assigning responsibilities, planning investment and assessing progress.
Alongside the negotiations, the Action Agenda brings together governments, cities, businesses, financial institutions and other organisations around voluntary initiatives and partnerships. This is where the COP31 presidency’s waste ambitions sit. They are intended to encourage cooperation and practical action, rather than establish new binding targets negotiated by governments.
What the waste targets mean
Through its Action Agenda, the presidency proposes halving the projected growth in annual municipal solid waste by 2035, rather than halving waste itself, with the baseline and forecast yet to be published.
The presidency also wants recycled and other secondary materials to meet at least 15% of global material demand by 2035, with details of how this will be measured still to come.
Waste and resources therefore feature beyond the theme explicitly labelled “zero waste”, connecting with manufacturing, cities, food systems and other priorities.
Reducing waste growth will require changes to product design, durability, repairability, reuse systems and consumption. In UNEP’s Global Waste Management Outlook 2024, I mapped responsibilities across the waste hierarchy to make clear which parts of society can influence each stage. Plans to deliver these ambitions need to explain what governments, manufacturers, retailers and waste operators will each contribute. Responsibility for prevention cannot rest with the organisations collecting and treating waste, which have limited influence over what ends up in the bin. Their experience can, however, help governments, manufacturers and product designers prevent waste in the first place.
Climate action through better waste management
Methane reduction is prominent because it can slow warming relatively quickly. For municipal waste, preventing food waste and improving the management of unavoidable organic waste offer important opportunities.
Alongside methane reduction, ending open burning is also being advocated ahead of COP31, offering further benefits for climate and public health. Burning waste releases black carbon, which contributes to warming, alongside pollutants that damage health. Expanding reliable collection and safe management can help address both problems.
Priorities will differ according to each country’s circumstances. High-income economies need to reduce resource-intensive consumption, including demand for imported goods whose production creates pollution elsewhere. Lower-income countries with service gaps urgently need dependable collection and safe management. Fast-growing economies face rising waste volumes alongside pressure to expand capacity.
International finance, technical assistance and partnerships developed through COP31 should support the responses countries choose, whether their immediate priority is to prevent waste, extend basic services or do both.
Creating demand for recovered materials
For a recycler considering investment, the question is whether manufacturers will buy the recovered material at a price that makes the operation viable. When virgin material is cheaper and performs well, voluntary recycled-content commitments have proved difficult to sustain.
Government policy can give that demand a firmer basis. Binding recycled-content requirements oblige manufacturers to use recycled material, while taxes can make it more competitive. The UK’s Plastic Packaging Tax is one example of government policy supporting demand for recycled materials, by taxing plastic packaging containing less than 30% recycled content.
Governments can also use their purchasing power. Public procurement requirements for recycled materials in construction, furniture or packaging could give suppliers greater confidence to invest. Public procurement can strengthen demand in any economy. Its influence can be particularly significant in lower-income countries, where government purchasing accounts for a larger share of a smaller market. Procurement can also support prevention through durable, repairable products and refurbishment.
Turning climate plans into projects
The presidency’s Climate Implementation Bridge is intended to help countries turn their climate priorities into projects and programmes that can attract finance. It brings together governments, technical partners and financial institutions to strengthen planning, prepare investment proposals and identify suitable funding. It will work through existing institutions rather than establish a new climate fund.
Developed in partnership with UNDP, the initiative proposes support for feasibility studies, financial assessments and project preparation. It also envisages grouping smaller projects into portfolios that could attract investors who would otherwise consider them too small. Financing could combine grants, public funding, development finance and private investment.
Its initial focus is electrification, so its application to waste remains something to watch. Nevertheless, it addresses familiar barriers: limited project preparation capacity, fragmented responsibilities and difficulty securing appropriate finance. The concept note recognises the need to assess revenues, buyers for project outputs and policy constraints alongside technical feasibility.
From announcements to lasting services
The International Solid Waste Association’s COP31 declaration calls for stronger policies, cooperation with producers and access to climate finance. These are essential foundations for turning international ambition into lasting improvements.
Through Global Waste Lab’s Built to Last webinar series, endorsed by CIWM for CPD, practitioners have examined why some waste systems endure while others struggle, drawing on their experience of building and sustaining services. That experience provides a useful basis for assessing the announcements from Antalya. Who will deliver each commitment? How will the work be funded over time? Will policy support those responsible, and how will progress be measured?
COP31 gives waste and resource management greater political visibility. The opportunity now is to turn that attention into policies that prevent waste, markets that support recovery and investment that sustains dependable services.
By Zoë Lenkiewicz, founder of Global Waste Lab and lead author of UNEP’s Global Waste Management Outlook 2024
Interested in more? Look out for the post-COP31 analysis I’ll be writing for Circular magazine.
And if you’re not in Antalya, I hope to see you at the ISWA World Congress in London, 9-11 Nov!
