Chart of the Week: Your Trash Says a Lot

Detectives will tell you that if you want to find information about a person that is readily available and open to the public, read that person's trash. You will find out what they eat, who they owe money to, what they read, and what products they use. The same principle applies to countries says Mother Jones:

The map shows the world's current largest solid trash makers. Of course, as the world's epitome of a consumer society the United States makes the most trash in excess of 2,000 lbs per capita annually [chart below: EPA]. Germany, the leading European economy, is close behind at 1,698 lbs. China has a way to go, but it is experiencing the largest population growth of any industrialized nation. By 2025 it may be the largest waste producing nation in the world at 562 million tons of solid waste per year.

A nation's waste stream is indicative of its resource use. Americans use 3 million sheets of paper every minute, 12,000 plastic bags every second and enough aluminum to replace the entire commercial airline fleet every three months. The size of its solid waste stream is disproportionate to its share of world population at 4.55%. We throwaway 14% of the food we buy. The good news is that America is recycling more paper than ever. 62% of paper gets recycled, and 34% of solid waste overall [chart bottom], but potentially that figure could be 86%.

Even if Americans recycled everything they could, an American would produce more waste than an average Indian. An average American uses more energy on New Year's Eve and Day than the average Tanzanian uses in an entire year. Its just the way we roll to the landfill.