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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Nina Lakhani Climate justice reporter

Clearing Gaza rubble could yield 90,000 tonnes of planet-heating emissions

a girl walks across a huge mound of rubble
A Palestinian girl finds her way amid the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli strike in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 10 July 2025. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Millions of tonnes of rubble left by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza could generate more than 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – and take as long as four decades to remove and process, a study has found.

Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals in Gaza generated at least 39m tonnes of concrete debris between October 2023 and December 2024, which will require at least 2.1m dump trucks driving 18m miles (29.5m km) to transport to disposal sites, researchers said.

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