Why Waste Is the Critical Lever for Scope 3 Success

As corporate sustainability strategies evolve, many organizations have made meaningful progress on direct emissions (Scope 1and Scope 2). But the biggest climate challenge (and opportunity) often lies in Scope3 emissions, the indirect greenhouse gases generated across the value chain. For most businesses, Scope 3 accounts for more than 70% of total emissions, making it the largest piece of the corporate carbon footprint and the hardest to address. Within this sprawling category, one area is consistently overlooked: waste management. Yet waste offers one of the most actionable, measurable ways to reduce emissions quickly and accelerate progress toward net-zero goals.

The Scope 3 Hurdle (and Why Waste Matters)

Scope 3 emissions span upstream activities, like raw materials and logistics, and downstream impacts, like product use and end-of-life treatment. Waste generation and disposal fall into this downstream category (Category 5 and Category 12 under the GHGProtocol), and because waste arises from daily operations, its impacts are fully counted in your footprint — something that can happen even when that waste is managed by certain third parties.

While waste may represent a smaller slice of totalScope 3 emissions compared with upstream supplier activities, its climate impact is disproportionately large due to methane released during decomposition in landfills.

Methane: The Potent Climate Cost of Landfilling

According to the EPA, when organic waste breaks down without oxygen in a landfill, it produces landfill gas that is roughly 50% methane and 50% CO2.

Methane is a short-lived but extremely potent greenhouse gas: over a 20-year time horizon, it traps heat more than 80 times as effectively as CO2.

In the U.S. alone, landfills are responsible for about 17% of all human-related methane emissions, and total landfill methane emissions were nearly 120million metric tons CO2-equivalent in 2022.

Transforming WasteInto Climate and Business Values

1. Avoid Methane and Other Potent Emissions

Diverting waste from landfill to alternative treatment scan prevent methane formation, directly cutting long-lived climate warming potential. After all, the efficiency of landfill gas capture technology is rather dubious, with high-percentage capture systems being uncommon to begin with. Even partial capture systems require infrastructure that many facilities simply lack and are not beholden to implementing – meaning a lot of methane is still regularly released and unmanaged.

2. Enable Circular Material Flows

Maximizing recycling and reuse keeps materials in productive use longer. Recovering metals and other recyclables before final disposal preserves raw material value and reduces the need for virgin resource extraction, establishing more circular systems of operation.

3. Recover Energy and Displace Fossil Fuels

When residual, non-recyclable waste is processed through waste-to-energy (WTE) or alternative engineered fuel (AEF) systems, it becomes a source of sustainable steam, electricity, or low-carbon fuels. This has a three-pronged benefit:

• It diverts waste from landfills, avoiding the contamination, emissions, and risks that come with that form of disposal.
• It displaces fossil energy inputs, utilizing renewable (and more efficient) carbon-negative power sources in their place.
• It recovers calorific value that would otherwise be lost.

These technologies can support industrial operationsand district energy systems, creating new revenue streams or lowering energycosts compared with traditional landfill disposal.

4. Strengthen ESG & Risk Management

Secure, certified waste processing — especially for sensitive, regulated, and / or high-risk waste — reduces long-term liabilities from environmental non-compliance or community health impacts.Incorporating this into environmental reporting enhances stakeholder trust and prepares companies for expanding disclosure expectations.

Zero Waste-to-Landfill: More Than a Target, a Roadmap

Adopting a zero waste-to-landfill strategy isn’t simply about hitting a KPI — It’s about shifting how emissions are managed throughout the value chain. It means:

• Prioritizing reduction, reuse, and recycling, and
• Leveraging recovery technologies when materials cannot be recycled.

This hierarchy not only curbs methane but also embeds resilience into supply chains by reducing dependence on external waste diversion capacity.

For hard-to-recycle residuals, AEF and WTE approaches ensure materials contribute value rather than sitting in landfills producing potent GHGs over decades.

Lifecycle Value Creation

When you divert waste to facilities that generate energy or engineered fuels, the impact goes beyond carbon accounting. You’re closing material loops, extracting energy value, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels, all of which multiply sustainability value across operations and brands.

This holistic approach helps sustainability leaders move beyond inventory management to climate action that is measurable, auditable, and financially sensible. 

Understanding and acting on the downstream implications of waste is pivotal for Scope 3 success. Our industry experts can offer practical, step-by-step guidance on how to transform waste from a compliance challenge into a strategic carbon reduction driver.

Connect with us and discover the impact your waste is having on your carbon footprint.