Revealed: the methane mega-leaks from UN climate summit host Turkey — SkimNews
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- Silivri landfill outside Istanbul leaks 7.4 tonnes of methane per hour, equivalent to 1.5 million SUVs running, making it one of the worst single manmade methane sources identified anywhere per the UCLA Stop Methane project's Carbon Mapper satellite analysis.
- UCLA researchers identified 10 super-emitting landfill sites across Turkey — stretching from İzmir to Ankara to Antalya — with the Şile dump alone releasing 4 tonnes of methane per hour, roughly the climate impact of 800,000 SUVs.
- Turkey's environment ministry declined to comment on the super-emitter findings, while the Istanbul municipality (operator İstaç) refused permission to photograph the Silivri site; staff there said uncovered dump areas were responsible and pledged to trap more methane for energy use.
- Turkey will host the UN climate summit Cop31 in Antalya in November with methane reduction atop its action agenda, but is not among the 159 countries that have signed the Global Methane Pledge to achieve a 30% emissions cut by 2030.
- Emine Erdoğan, honorary president of Turkey's Zero Waste Foundation and chair of the UN Advisory Board on Zero Waste, has campaigned globally for methane cuts, yet legislation enacted last August to monitor Turkish emissions covers only CO2 and explicitly excludes biomass facilities like landfills.
- İstaç extracts 6,000 cubic metres of methane per hour at Silivri for burning as fuel, but Carbon Mapper's waste lead Tia Scarpelli said poor design, maintenance failures, and unlit flares mean collection systems still vent large quantities of methane.
- South Korea recycles close to 100% of its food waste — cited by researchers as proof that diverting organic waste from landfills is a proven alternative to Turkey's rotting-dump approach.
Why it matters: Turkey is asking 196 nations to adopt methane cuts as a core outcome of the Cop31 summit it hosts, yet UCLA's data ranks its own landfills among the world's worst super-emitters and Turkey has refused to join the Global Methane Pledge — a contradiction that directly undermines the credibility of the agenda Erdoğan's government is promoting to the world.
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