Open burning of rubbish contributes more than a trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, but is often not included in national emissions estimates.
Christine Wiedinmyer, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and her colleagues estimated global waste-burning emissions on the basis of factors such as national population sizes, income and waste production and collection. They calculated that the CO2 generated by open waste burning is equivalent to 5% of reported global anthropogenic emissions in 2010. In some countries, such as Mali and Sri Lanka, these emissions exceed those reported by the United Nations.
Emissions from burning rubbish are currently not accounted for in climate and air-quality models, so could explain some discrepancies between observed levels of pollutants and those estimated by models.
Environ. Sci. Technol. http://doi.org/txh (2014)
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Rubbish is a burning problem. Nature 512, 8 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/512008a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/512008a
