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A shocking headline, and something that needs addressing, but the news isn't all doom-and-gloom and "Blame Canada."

To identify the largest producers of waste, 24/7 Tempo calculated the special waste and regular municipal solid waste per capita produced by each country, using data from the World Bank’s “What a Waste” global database, last updated in September of 2018. We summed for each country the metric tons (or tonnes) of waste in the latest year for which data was available in the special categories of agricultural waste, construction and demolition, e waste, hazardous waste, industrial waste, medical waste, and the total municipal solid waste (msw).

...

1. Canada

• Estimated annual waste per capita: 36.1 metric tons

• Estimated annual waste total: 1,325,480,289 metric tons

• Waste treatment recycling: 20.6%

• Population: 36,708,083

Driven by agricultural waste and industrial waste generation, which totaled 181 million tonnes and 1.12 billion tonnes, respectively, in 2017, Canada's estimated total waste generation is the highest in the world. Canada produced 1.33 billion metric tonnes of waste, or 36.1 tonnes per person.

According to the Canadian government, waste from industrial activities such as oil refining, chemical manufacturing, and metal processing contains various hazardous chemicals, including acids, phenols, arsenic, lead, and mercury. Industrial waste generation is a long-standing problem in Canada, which sought to address the issue as early as 1992 when it ratified the Basel Convention. Like many affluent nations, Canada exports large portions of its waste to other countries, and the convention controls and aims at reducing these waste shipments. This and other measures put Canada on the list of countries doing the most to protect the environment.

Emphasis added.

The top ten:

10: Serbia - 8.9 tonnes/person
9: Ukraine - 10.6
8: Luxumbourg - 10.8
7: Sweden - 16.2
6: Armenia - 16.3
5: Finland - 16.6
4: Estonia - 23.5
3: United States - 25.9
2: Bulgaria - 26.7
1: Canada - 36.1