{"id":1010,"date":"2025-07-29T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2025-08-01T15:09:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:09:31","slug":"gaza-rubble-clearance-could-result-in-90000-tonnes-of-carbon-emissions-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2025\/07\/29\/gaza-rubble-clearance-could-result-in-90000-tonnes-of-carbon-emissions-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza rubble clearance could result in 90,000 tonnes of carbon emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Destroyed<\/div>\n

A study has calculated that it could take four decades to clear the rubble from destroyed and damaged buildings caused by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza<\/a> and the process would yield over 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study, which was published earlier this month in the journal Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability<\/a>, used open-source spatial data to calculate that over 36.8 million metric tonnes of concrete debris has been created from buildings destroyed and damaged by Israeli forces between 7 October 2023 and 1 December 2024.<\/p>\n

According to the research, removing and processing this rubble\u00a0could generate more than 90,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

This would largely be due to the heavy machinery required to collect the rubble and transport it to disposal sites.<\/p>\n

Removing rubble would take 2.1 million truck journeys<\/strong><\/p>\n

The highly complex task of clearing the destruction could also take up to 40 years, according to Samer Abdelnour<\/a>, the study’s lead author and senior lecturer in strategic management at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and co-author Nicholas Roy, a statistical science master’s student at Oxford University.<\/p>\n

The researchers estimate that it would take 2.1 million truck journeys to remove the debris to disposal sites, which would require driving 29.5 million kilometres.<\/p>\n

According to the study, these journeys would generate almost 66,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n

Crushing rubble would also generate carbon emissions<\/strong><\/p>\n

The other major carbon cost would be associated with crushing uncontaminated concrete rubble into aggregates for reuse in local rebuilding projects. Abdelnour and Roy compared two scenarios to highlight the carbon cost of processing uncontaminated debris.<\/p>\n

The first scenario assumes that 80 per cent of the debris is viable for crushing. If 50 high-capacity industrial jaw crushers were used, it would take just over six months to undertake the work, resulting in around 2,976 tonnes of carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n