At a Turkish waste plant, COP31’s case for climate action goes beyond fossil fuels | News | Eco-Business | Asia Pacific

A waste-to-energy plant in the municipality of Mamak, in the outskirts of Ankara in Türkiye. It generates biogas electricity from methane captured at the nearby landfill, with a licensed capacity of 17 to 25.4 megawatts. Image Eco-Business/ Hannah Fernandez

COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum says reducing methane, rethinking waste and protecting seas are as important as the pledge to transition away from fossil fuels. But the approach faces a harder question of whether domestic action can deliver the fossil fuel shift that climate diplomacy has promised.

By Hannah Alcoseba Fernandez

8 minute read Sept. 15, 2026

As plastic, metal, paper, and organic waste moved through sorting machinery at a treatment plant outside the city of Ankara, Türkiye’s COP31 presidency sought to make a broader point about climate action not beginning and ending with the politically fraught question of fossil fuels.

For Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s environment minister and president-designate of this year’s UN climate summit, the route to a transition away from coal, oil and gas also runs through the everyday systems that shape emissions – what cities throw away, how they manage rotting food and garden waste, whether materials are reused, and how coastal ecosystems are protected.

“If we can realise the actions on our action agenda, then we will start transitioning away from fossil fuels, and that means taking concrete steps,” Kurum told journalists at a media briefing during the Blue Dialogue summit on 10 September at Trabzon in Türkiye. “The other items on the action agenda are as important as transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

The summit’s Action Agenda is the UN climate process’ implementation track, which brings together voluntary efforts to turn the Paris Agreement’s goals and COP decisions into real world projects, partnerships and solutions that can be scaled up.

Kurum’s remarks signal how Türkiye wants to present the upcoming November talks in the city of Antalya as not primarily a forum for negotiating new language on fossil fuels, but as an “implementation COP” that seeks progress across clean energy, methane, waste, cities, food, oceans and climate finance.

Türkiye has largely replaced unregulated dumping with 94 sanitary landfill and waste-sorting facilities, though the sector faces uncertainty as some waste-to-energy projects approach the end of their renewable energy support periods, an ITC spokesperson said. Image: Eco-Business/ Hannah Fernandez

That approach is visible in the summit’s ten-part Action Agenda. Its second theme – Zero Waste and Methane Reduction – treats waste as a climate issue rather than merely a municipal service issue.

Citing studies that attribute around 30 per cent of current global warming to methane, the COP31 presidency argued that waste prevention, circular resource use and better management of organic waste can deliver rapid climate benefits. It has called for countries to halve the projected growth in annual municipal solid waste generation by 2035.

During a 9 September tour for journalists, operators from Invest Trading & Consulting AG (ITC) showed how the plant puts Türkiye’s zero waste policy into practice. The environmental and waste management company operates integrated solid waste, recycling and energy-recovery facilities.

The ITC site in Mamak includes a sanitary landfill, a mechanical sorting plant that recovers recyclable materials from municipal waste, and a biomethanisation plant that converts organic waste into biogas for energy generation. Residual waste that cannot be recovered is disposed of in the sanitary landfill.

Waste sorting is being monitored by employees at the ITC waste-to-energy plant. Image: Eco-Business/ Hannah Fernandez

The government said the national recycling rate rose from 13 per cent in 2017 to 37.53 per cent in 2025. But higher recycling alone does not establish how much methane the country has avoided. Landfills remain a major destination for waste, especially where food and other organic materials are not separately collected, composted or treated through anaerobic digestion.

But Fatih Şimşek , Energy Production Operations Manager of ITC, said that the company’s planned biomethanol plant in Ankara offers another glimpse of the kind of model Türkiye wants to promote through COP31’s Zero Waste and Methane Reduction agenda. The facility would use biogas generated from municipal waste to produce low carbon marine methanol, linking landfill-gas management with the decarbonisation of shipping.

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We want to develop new renewable energy opportunities, including biomethanol and other products derived from waste, with COP31 fast approaching.

Fatih Şimşek , Energy Production Operations Manager, Invest Trading & Consulting AG (ITC)

“We want to develop new renewable energy opportunities, including biomethanol and other products derived from waste, with COP31 fast approaching. We are also working on further projects at the Sincan facility in Ankara,” told reporters during the tour.

The proposed biomethanol project remains at the engineering design stage, with a final investment decision targeted for 2027. Its development also comes as some landfill gas and biogas projects in Türkiye approach the end of their support periods under the country’s Renewable Energy Resources Support Mechanism, or YEKDEM.

Once facilities leave the scheme, they may have to sell electricity into less predictable market conditions while continuing to cover the costs of methane capture, gas treatment and plant maintenance, an ITC spokesperson said. That has increased interest in alternative uses for waste-derived gas, including its conversion into biomethanol.

The project’s ultimate climate value will depend on whether it captures methane that would otherwise escape from waste sites, and on how effectivel