Dive Brief:
- Google has signed a deal with artificial intelligence-powered recycling and waste sorting company AMP Robotics in a bid to cut its carbon footprint and curb methane emissions generated by landfill waste.
- The agreement, announced Tuesday, will allow Google to remove 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. The carbon credits will be generated through the AMP-backed recycling project based in Virginia, which the companies said is the largest to exist in the United States.
- Instead of letting waste decompose in landfills and emit carbon dioxide and methane — which has 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide in the near-term, according to the Environmental Defense Fund — AMP will convert it into biochar, a material that can sequester carbon for centuries, according to a release.
Dive Insight:
Google said that the partnership aims to decrease overall waste and improve local air quality for surrounding communities. The deal is also expected to help develop new pathways for the waste industry to tackle superpollutants like methane, AMP said in a separate release. The two companies also said they would collaborate to establish frameworks to quantify the impact that waste diversion combined with biochar carbon removal has on methane elimination, and help scale such solutions across the waste industry.
Municipal solid waste landfills are ranked as the third-largest source of methane emissions generated from human activities in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
AMP said its process of diverting organic material from landfills and converting it into biochar before it generates methane “both reduces near-term warming and locks carbon away for the long term.”
“We’re excited to catalyze an approach to waste management that takes on the twin challenges of climate change: the near-term warming of methane and the long-term warming of carbon dioxide,” Google’s Carbon Credits and Removal Lead Randy Spock said in the March 17 release. “AMP’s technology, through its partnerships with local waste management authorities, offers a scalable way to turn waste organic materials into a real climate solution.”
The deal builds on Google’s work to scale carbon removal pathways and manage superpollutants like methane. Last year, the global search engine and tech conglomerate announced a partnership with bio-waste carbon removal company Vaulted Deep to remove 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. Isometric, an independent carbon removal registry, will measure the technology’s effectiveness at preventing methane emissions generated by waste in that deal, Google said.
