Editorial: How can the waste and resource management sector help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Net Zero?

In 2024, we embarked on creating a themed issue of Waste and Resource Management, asking for authors to contribute to this issue. We invited contributions to answer a key question: how can the waste and resource management sector help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Net Zero? Our contributors certainly delivered and helped us to understand some of the key issues.What do we mean by Net Zero, and why is it important in the waste management sector? Net Zero means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere, by oceans and forests for instance (United Nations, 2023).Waste is directly and indirectly responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the climate emergency, and the waste sector is responsible for 20% of global methane emissions and 3.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions (World Economic Forum, 2022).The construction sector in its entirety is thought to account for 37% of global emissions since the manufacture of key construction materials such as cement, steel and aluminium have a large carbon footprint (United Nations Environment Programme, 2023). The sector also produces a large amount of waste, with 61% of the UK’s total waste from construction and demolition in 2020 (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2025).As highlighted in three of our themed issue papers waste prevention in the construction sector is key. The implementation of the circular economy where waste is eliminated and materials are kept in use for as long as possible is vital in tackling climate change (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2025).As outlined by Williams et al. (2025), waste prevention in the form of successful architectural salvage and reclamation could make a small but important contribution to net-zero resource and waste management. Retaining buildings, parts of buildings or reusing those parts in new designs can reduce the embodied carbon compared to building from scratch and reduces the reliance on raw materials.Olubambi et al. (2025) highlighted that a shift to designing buildings that reduce and ultimately eliminate construction waste are important, with building information modelling cited as a key tool and enabler.Mbadugha and Ozumba (2025) explored the traditional waste hierarchy in the context of behaviour highlighting that the term waste prevention can also be represented in day-to-day terminology such as ‘make do and mend’, renting, sharing and passing on. All these activities can contribute towards the circular economy, keeping construction materials in use for longer and preventing these from becoming waste.Another waste type that is contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions is food waste. According to United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2024), food loss and waste account for 8–10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and costs US$1 trillion annually. Research undertaken by Payling et al. (2025) showed that surplus food redistribution can alleviate the volume of food sent to landfill and offset greenhouse gas emissions associated with food waste and has many other societal benefits.While waste prevention is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recycling of waste is also an important contributor and as Pacifici et al. (2024) rightly asked: do we really know the environmental impacts of chemical recycling of plastics? The paper highlighted the importance of reviewing the environmental impacts of each process before choosing how to recycle a waste.So, as a final thought, what else can the waste and resource management sector do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Net Zero? Perhaps we should also consider how will the sector help us all? Will we see more solar panels on waste management facility roofs, solar panels on closed landfills, more electric refuse collection vehicles; perhaps also carbon dioxide capture from our waste recovery facilities, if currently programmed demonstration plants prove to be environmentally advantageous? The waste sector will also have a key part to play in reusing, recycling and recovery of the vital technology we need to use to help achieve Net Zero, such as batteries and solar panels at the end of life.