How much of the carbon in waste burns to carbon dioxide in the open compared with an incinerator, and what methane and nitrous oxide do the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defaults add?

In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 guide, 100 percent of waste carbon is assumed to oxidise in an incinerator but 58 percent in open burning of municipal waste. The open fire adds 6,500 grams of methane (CH4) per tonne, and the guide gives nitrous oxide (N2O) defaults by waste type.

Oxidation and carbon defaults (Table 5.2)

• Oxidation factor, share of the carbon that becomes carbon dioxide (CO2): incineration 100 percent for municipal, industrial and clinical waste, sewage sludge and fossil liquid waste. Open burning 58 percent for municipal waste. The table marks open burning as not occurring for the other types.
• The note says that when waste is open-burned its weight falls by about 49 to 67 percent, and suggests 58 percent as the default. The text adds that, if you use an incineration oxidation factor below 100 percent, it needs to be documented in detail with the source.
• Industrial waste: 50 percent carbon in the dry weight, 90 percent of it fossil. Clinical waste: 60 and 40 percent. Sewage sludge: 40 to 50 percent carbon, no fossil carbon. Fossil liquid waste: 80 percent carbon of the wet weight, all fossil.
• Our reading: the guide gives no open-burning oxidation for industrial waste, so a factory burning its own waste in the open is closest to the municipal line, and should say so.

Methane (Table 5.3 and the text)

• Open burning of municipal waste: 6,500 grams of CH4 per tonne of wet waste. The guide says this factor should be applied as a default, unless another CH4 emission factor seems more appropriate.
• Incinerators, in kilograms of CH4 per gigagram (1,000 tonnes) of municipal waste: continuous stoker 0.2, continuous fluidised bed about 0; semi-continuous stoker 6 and fluidised bed 188; batch type stoker 60 and fluidised bed 237. All are from Japanese data. For continuous incineration the guide says it is good practice to use the stationary combustion CH4 factors instead.
• Equation 5.4 sums, over waste types, tonnes burnt times the factor.

Nitrous oxide (Table 5.6)

• In grams of N2O per tonne: municipal waste in continuous or semi-continuous incinerators 50, wet weight; in batch incinerators 60, wet weight; open burning 150, dry weight.
• Industrial waste, all incineration: 100, wet weight. Sludge other than sewage sludge: 450, wet weight. Sewage sludge: 990 dry weight, or 900 wet weight.
• The guide says it is good practice to apply these where there is no country-specific information. The open-burning figure comes from agricultural residue burning, at up to 0.15 grams of N2O per kilogram of dry matter, which the guide extends to household waste.

Reading the three together

The carbon dioxide from plastics falls by 42 percent when the same waste burns in the open, but the open fire emits far more CH4 and N2O. At the example global warming potentials below, the CH4 and N2O add about 34 percent to the fossil CO2 in the open and under 2 percent in a batch incinerator.

10 tonnes of waste: 6 tonnes paper and 4 tonnes plastics, burnt in the open or in a batch incinerator (example quantities)

• Table 2.4 defaults: paper dry matter 90 percent, carbon 46 percent of dry weight, fossil 1 percent of the carbon; plastics 100, 75 and 100 percent
• Open, oxidation 0.58: paper 6 x 0.9 x 0.46 x 0.01 x 0.58 x 44/12 = 0.053 tonnes of CO2; plastics 4 x 1 x 0.75 x 1 x 0.58 x 44/12 = 6.38 tonnes. Total 6.43 tonnes
• Incinerator, oxidation 1.0: paper 0.091 tonnes; plastics 11.0 tonnes. Total 11.09 tonnes
• Open: CH4 10 x 6,500 grams = 65 kilograms. N2O on 9.4 tonnes dry weight (5.4 + 4.0) x 150 grams = 1.41 kilograms
• Batch incinerator, stoker: CH4 10 x 0.06 = 0.6 kilograms; N2O 10 x 60 grams = 0.6 kilograms
• At example global warming potentials (GWP) of 28 and 265, open: 1,820 + 374 = 2,194 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, 34 percent of 6,430. Incinerator: 16.8 + 159 = 176 kilograms, 1.6 percent of 11,090

The 10 tonnes, the paper and plastics split and both GWP values are example numbers. Treating factory waste with the municipal composition table is our assumption, and the incinerator line uses the stoker batch factor. Both the open and the batch factors in this example are municipal waste rows; the industrial waste row for N2O is 100 grams per tonne, wet weight, which would give 1.0 kilogram for the 10 tonnes.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so diesel or gas used to fire an incinerator shows up once uploaded. Tonnes and types of waste burnt come from your own weighing and logs, which you add.

• Open burning of waste on a factory site
• Waste incineration: fossil CO2 step by step
• Waste sent to waste-to-energy
• Free calculators

Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 5 chapter 5: Incineration and Open Burning of Waste (Equations 5.1, 5.2 and 5.4, Tables 5.2 to 5.6), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 5 chapter 2: Waste Generation, Composition and Management Data (Table 2.4)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Defaults are from the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and rest on Japanese and United States data. Confirm with your verifier which waste type and oxidation factor you use for open burning.