Why does the same waste stream have such different factors depending on disposal route?

Because landfill and diversion routes produce emissions through completely different chemistry. In a landfill, organic material decomposes without oxygen and releases methane — a gas roughly 28 times more warming than CO2 over 100 years — for decades after burial. Recycling, composting, and incineration with energy recovery avoid that anaerobic decomposition almost entirely, so their factors are a fraction of landfill's, sometimes less than one hundredth.

Where do the tonnes come from?

Your waste contractor's invoice or collection log. Commercial waste contracts are usually billed by weight or by container size converted to an estimated weight, and most contractors will state tonnes collected per stream (general waste, food waste, paper/cardboard) directly on the invoice or in a monthly summary.

Is waste disposal Scope 1, 2, or 3?

Scope 3, category 5 (waste generated in operations). The decomposition or combustion happens at a landfill or facility your organization doesn't own or operate — you generated the waste, but someone else processes it, which is the textbook definition of an indirect, value-chain emission.

Why is food waste's landfill factor so much higher than mixed commercial waste's?

Food and drink waste is almost entirely organic material with high moisture content, which decomposes fast and generates methane efficiently once buried. Mixed commercial and industrial waste contains plastics, metals, and other inert material that doesn't decompose at all, diluting the organic fraction. That's why food waste to landfill (700.3 kgCO2e/tonne) comes in well above mixed waste to landfill (520.5 kgCO2e/tonne) even though both are "landfill."

What if my organization sends waste to a modern waste-to-energy plant?

Use the incineration with energy recovery factor for that stream rather than the landfill factor — it is dramatically lower (4.68568 kgCO2e/tonne vs. 520.5327 for mixed waste) because combustion with energy capture avoids the decades-long methane release of landfill and displaces some grid generation. Check your contractor's confirmation of disposal route; assuming landfill when the true route is energy-from-waste will significantly overstate your total.

Free calculator

Waste disposal carbon calculator (Scope 3 category 5)

Turn tonnes from a waste contractor's invoice into Scope 3 kgCO2e across six streams and disposal routes, using DESNZ 2025 factors — free, with full provenance.

Mixed commercial waste to landfill (tonnes)From your waste contractor's invoice or collection log.Mixed commercial waste to incineration w/ energy recovery (tonnes)Confirm the disposal route with your contractor before using this factor.Food & drink waste to landfill (tonnes)Kitchen, canteen, or F&B organic waste sent to landfill.Food & drink waste to composting (tonnes)Kitchen, canteen, or F&B organic waste sent to composting.Paper & board to landfill (tonnes)Mixed paper and cardboard sent to landfill.Paper & board to recycling (tonnes)Mixed paper and cardboard sent to closed-loop recycling.

Prefer to skip the typing? Upload the bill instead — the numbers get read for you, three documents a day free.

How this calculation works

Emissions (kgCO₂e) = tonnes of waste × factor for that stream and disposal route (kgCO₂e/tonne)

The formula is simple, but unlike fuel or electricity, the factor depends on two things at once: what the waste is and where it goes. This calculator covers three streams — mixed commercial and industrial waste, food and drink waste, and paper and board — each with two disposal routes, because the gap between routes is where the real signal lives. Sending the same tonne of food waste to a composting facility instead of a landfill cuts its factor by more than 98%.

Waste disposal is a Scope 3, category 5 emission (waste generated in operations): your organization produces the waste, but the decomposition or combustion that actually releases the greenhouse gas happens at a facility someone else owns and operates. That indirect relationship is exactly what category 5 exists to capture.

Why landfill dwarfs the alternatives

The gap between disposal routes comes down to one gas: methane. Organic material buried in a landfill decomposes anaerobically — without oxygen — and anaerobic decomposition of organic matter produces methane, a greenhouse gas with roughly 28 times the warming effect of CO₂ over 100 years. That methane keeps escaping from the landfill for decades after the waste goes in, which is why landfill factors are so much larger than any other route.

Composting, recycling, and incineration with energy recovery all avoid that anaerobic pathway. Composting exposes organic waste to oxygen, which produces mostly CO₂ instead of methane and at a much lower rate. Recycling paper and board avoids decomposition, sequestration issues aside, by turning the material back into feedstock rather than burying it. Incineration with energy recovery burns the waste — releasing CO₂ directly, but no long-tail methane — while the heat generated typically displaces some grid electricity or heat generation, which is credited back against the factor.

The factors we apply

| Stream | Route | Factor (kgCO₂e/tonne) | | --- | --- | --- | | Mixed commercial & industrial waste | Landfill | 520.5327 | | Mixed commercial & industrial waste | Incineration w/ energy recovery | 4.68568 | | Food & drink waste | Landfill | 700.30886 | | Food & drink waste | Composting | 8.98311 | | Paper & board (mixed) | Landfill | 1,164.4894 | | Paper & board (mixed) | Recycling (closed loop) | 4.68568 |

The pattern repeats across every stream: landfill sits two orders of magnitude above the diverted alternative. Paper and board shows the starkest gap of the three — 1,164.5 kgCO₂e per tonne landfilled against 4.7 kgCO₂e per tonne recycled, a difference of roughly 250 times, because paper is almost entirely the kind of organic, methane-generating material that landfill chemistry punishes hardest. These are DESNZ 2025 factors, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and the exact factor, source, and licence are shown under every result.

A worked example

A mid-sized office's waste contractor invoice for the year shows: 5 tonnes of mixed commercial waste to landfill, 2 tonnes of mixed commercial waste diverted to an energy-from-waste plant, 1 tonne of food waste to landfill, and 0.5 tonnes of paper and board recycled.

Mixed waste (landfill): 5 × 520.5327 = 2,602.66 kgCO₂e

Mixed waste (incineration w/ energy recovery): 2 × 4.68568 = 9.37 kgCO₂e

Food waste (landfill): 1 × 700.30886 = 700.31 kgCO₂e

Paper & board (recycling): 0.5 × 4.68568 = 2.34 kgCO₂e

Total = 3,314.68 kgCO₂e ≈ 3.3 tCO₂e

The 2 tonnes diverted to energy-from-waste contribute barely more than the half-tonne of recycled paper, while the 5 tonnes still going to landfill account for nearly 80% of the total on their own. If that organization renegotiated its contract to route the mixed waste to incineration with energy recovery instead of landfill, the same 5 tonnes would cost 23.4 kgCO₂e instead of 2,602.66 — a reduction worth more than every other line in the calculation combined.

What this calculator doesn't cover

Other waste streams. Electronic waste, hazardous waste, construction and demolition debris, and glass all have their own emissions profiles and aren't yet in this tool's factor set.
Waste-to-landfill from other regions. These are UK DESNZ factors, used here as the international default because they are the most complete open-licensed waste dataset available. Local landfill methane capture rates vary by country and facility, which this national-average factor can't reflect.
Transport of waste to disposal. The emissions from trucks hauling waste to landfill or a recycling facility belong in freight, not here — see the freight & shipping calculator.
Wastewater. Liquid waste and sewage are a separate category from solid waste — see the water usage calculator for the treatment factor.
Confirming the true disposal route. This calculator applies whatever route you select; if your contractor changes where your waste actually goes without telling you, the factor you're using may no longer match reality. Ask for annual confirmation of disposal routing.

None of these gaps make the result wrong; they define what it counts — tonnes across three common commercial waste streams, split by the two disposal routes that matter most for the arithmetic.

Where this fits in your reporting

Waste disposal sits in Scope 3, category 5 (waste generated in operations) under the GHG Protocol. The tonnes-times-factor arithmetic this page runs is identical whether the waste comes from a company's office pantry, a nonprofit's community kitchen, a school's canteen, or a public agency's building — and it feeds whichever framework is asking: ISSB IFRS S2, GRI 305, or a CDP waste-management question. Singapore-listed issuers reporting Scope 3 have their own timeline — see the SGX climate reporting deadlines guide if that applies to you. If your contractor's invoice already lists tonnes by stream, upload it directly instead of retyping the numbers.

Sources

UK Government (DESNZ), Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2025 — waste disposal factors by stream and route (Open Government Licence v3.0): gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting
GHG Protocol, Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard — category 5, waste generated in operations: ghgprotocol.org/scope-3-technical-calculation-guidance

Frequently asked questions

Why does the same waste stream have such different factors depending on disposal route?: Because landfill and diversion routes produce emissions through completely different chemistry. In a landfill, organic material decomposes without oxygen and releases methane — a gas roughly 28 times more warming than CO2 over 100 years — for decades after burial. Recycling, composting, and incineration with energy recovery avoid that anaerobic decomposition almost entirely, so their factors are a fraction of landfill's, sometimes less than one hundredth.
Where do the tonnes come from?: Your waste contractor's invoice or collection log. Commercial waste contracts are usually billed by weight or by container size converted to an estimated weight, and most contractors will state tonnes collected per stream (general waste, food waste, paper/cardboard) directly on the invoice or in a monthly summary.
Is waste disposal Scope 1, 2, or 3?: Scope 3, category 5 (waste generated in operations). The decomposition or combustion happens at a landfill or facility your organization doesn't own or operate — you generated the waste, but someone else processes it, which is the textbook definition of an indirect, value-chain emission.
Why is food waste's landfill factor so much higher than mixed commercial waste's?: Food and drink waste is almost entirely organic material with high moisture content, which decomposes fast and generates methane efficiently once buried. Mixed commercial and industrial waste contains plastics, metals, and other inert material that doesn't decompose at all, diluting the organic fraction. That's why food waste to landfill (700.3 kgCO2e/tonne) comes in well above mixed waste to landfill (520.5 kgCO2e/tonne) even though both are "landfill."
What if my organization sends waste to a modern waste-to-energy plant?: Use the incineration with energy recovery factor for that stream rather than the landfill factor — it is dramatically lower (4.68568 kgCO2e/tonne vs. 520.5327 for mixed waste) because combustion with energy capture avoids the decades-long methane release of landfill and displaces some grid generation. Check your contractor's confirmation of disposal route; assuming landfill when the true route is energy-from-waste will significantly overstate your total.