Canada produces the most waste in the world

[driveway]

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

[peter12]

Holy ####, Canada is the worst, actually.

[Fuzz]

I'd be interested to see the breakdown, specifically "Agricultural waste". Is that mostly organics? Is it really waste, and should it be attributed to us, given we export so much of the product?

[gasman]

Originally Posted by driveway

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




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

Lol, file this under useless facts.

Per capita garbage production that includes industrial waste. So we get penalized because we have high construction and manufacturing compared to population?

Luxenbourg which is 8 in the list is 1/3 the size of Calgary! And their main industry is banking.

This is really bad "journalism", with click bait headlines trolling for nothing but emotion.

China isn't even on the list, they generate 10x the garbage of the USA which generates 10x the garbage of Canada.

But yeah, Canada is evil

[Weitz]

nvm

[driveway]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'd be interested to see the breakdown, specifically "Agricultural waste". Is that mostly organics? Is it really waste, and should it be attributed to us, given we export so much of the product?

From the OECD: Agricultural waste is waste produced as a result of various agricultural operations. It includes manure and other wastes from farms, poultry houses and slaughterhouses; harvest waste; fertilizer run- off from fields; pesticides that enter into water, air or soils; and salt and silt drained from fields.

So, by weight it would, almost certainly be mostly organics?

But looking at the breakdown of Canada's waste, 1.12 billion tonnes were industrial waste, while the only other nation in the top ten that produced more than a billion total tonnes was the United States.

Compare that with the Ukraine, population 44 million, which produced only 470 million tonnes total, and yet: "448 million of which is hazardous waste. No other of the 105 countries for which data on hazardous waste is available produces more such waste. "

So, in terms of total waste, Canada is doing very poorly, and industrial waste is certainly a serious problem - but there is a reason the article said Canada is considered one of the countries doing the most for the environment.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by driveway

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




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

I could actually see Canada as being very high up the list, as we produce a lot of oil per capita and have a large country with a very cold climate. Canada also has a rapidly expanding population, which means more constructions....Bulgaria as second though? They have a middling Eastern European economy and a contracting population. There's just no way they are producing waste at a level several times higher than expanding nations with much stronger economies.

Something seems fishy.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by gasman

China isn't even on the list, they generate 10x the garbage of the USA which generates 10x the garbage of Canada.

But yeah, Canada is evil

The United States produces 6.3 times as much waste as Canada with 8.8 times the population.

[Fuzz]

I have to guess that a vast majority of that "industrial waste" is in the form of mining waste, like rock. I assume oilsands tailings as well? I'm not sure these numbers mean much when you look at it that way.

[PepsiFree]

I look forward to the many (more) responses that don't realise the list is per capita, and didn't bother reading the article that points out how much more waste the US (and China) produces overall.

[Fuzz]

It's tough to even compare numbers:
special_waste_construction_and_demolition_waste_to ns_year

Bulgaria: 172369117

Canada: 653255

So 172 billion tonnes is construction and demolition waste in Bulgaria, but under a million in Canada? This looks like someone took the data dump and tried to make a news story of it. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Weitz]

If anything this article shows how deceiving per capita reporting on things can be.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It's tough to even compare numbers:
special_waste_construction_and_demolition_waste_to ns_year

Bulgaria: 172369117

Canada: 653255

So 172 billion tonnes is construction and demolition waste in Bulgaria, but under a million in Canada? This looks like someone took the data dump and tried to make a news story of it. Garbage in, garbage out.

Clearly Bulgaria is building some kind of underground super weapon. How else do you explain Bulgaria having 200 times as much construction waste with a population 20% the size.

Also, they could be lizard people.

[monkeyman]

Time to shut down all agriculture and industry in Canada. Get on it McKenna, after all, we have to set an example for the rest of the world.

[gasman]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I look forward to the many (more) responses that don't realise the list is per capita, and didn't bother reading the article that points out how much more waste the US (and China) produces overall.

My point was per capita is a stupid metric.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by gasman

My point was per capita is a stupid metric.

Why? How else should we measure? Should a Canadian be entitled to produce 40 times as much waste as a Chinese citizen?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Why? How else should we measure? Should a Canadian be entitled to produce 40 times as much waste as a Chinese citizen?

Do they live in the exact same circumstance? Canada is a larger country with a significantly lower population.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I look forward to the many (more) responses that don't realise the list is per capita, and didn't bother reading the article that points out how much more waste the US (and China) produces overall.

It'd probably help if the thread title weren't misleading and inaccurate.

Anyway, a quick look at the article and the data seems... suspicious. As Fuzz says, some of those numbers just don't make any sense, and it's hard to glean anything significant from them without being sure things are being calculated in the same way across the board.

[AFireInside]

I'll just save a ton of people on this board the time.


"Well who cares!?!? Until China, USA, (insert country here) start cutting back why should we?!?! They are worse!!!!"

Now let's move on to an actual discussion.

[mikephoen]

The methodology of this study makes little sense. Looking at the agriculture waste, by far the heaviest and most plentiful 'waste' item would be manure. But manure is tilled back into the fields to be used as a natural fertilizer, so is it really waste?

And in mining, if you take rocks, extract the gold/silver/other metals, and then dump the remaining rocks back out, that's a lot of tons of 'waste'. But they were rocks before and they're still rocks after, very little has changed, but they sure racked up a lot of waste tonnage for this study.