Part Four / What We’ve Done About It

4.21 Waste around the World

All online sources accessed on

  1. the solid-waste management sector is usually one of the top three Kaza, S., et al., What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050, World Bank, 20 September 2018, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30317; Clean air Coalition and United Nations Environment Programme, Global Methane Assessment: Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions, 2021, https://www.ccacoalition.org/en/resources/global-methane-assessment-full-report.

    Seventy-seven per cent of countries have included solutions Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement: Synthesis Report, 17 September 2021, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_08E.pdf.

  2. This translates to regional variation Kaza, S., et al., More Growth, Less Garbage, World Bank, 15 July 2021, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/35998.

    To prevent a further waste crisis Ibid.

    more than one third of the waste generated globally by 2050 Ibid.

  3. 1 per cent of the urban population works informally in waste management Medina, M., ‘Scrap and trade: scavenging myths’, Our World, 15 March 2010, https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/scavenging-from-waste.

    In the fastest growing regions … more than two thirds of the waste Kaza et al., What a Waste 2.0.

  4. 269 million tonnes of plastic are generated in municipal solid waste Ibid.; Kaza et al., More Growth, Less Garbage.

    we expect that amount to nearly triple PEW Charitable Trusts and SystemIQ, Breaking the Plastic Wave: A Comprehensive Assessment of Pathways towards Stopping Ocean Plastic Pollution, 2020, https://www.systemiq.earth/breakingtheplasticwav.

    imagine a trash truck full of plastic bottles World Economic Forum, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics, January 2016, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf.

    Eighty per cent of the plastic entering the oceans Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, Stemming the Tide: Land-based Strategies for a Plastic-free Ocean, September 2015, https://tinyurl.com/33z9p2eu; and Statement of Accountability: https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/take-deep-dive/stemming-the-tide/.

    the 150 million tonnes of plastics … will more than quadruple PEW Charitable Trusts and SystemIQ, Breaking the Plastic Wave

  5. cumulative improvements driven by high-income countries are not sufficient World Bank, Bridging the Gap in Solid Waste Management: Governance Requirements for Results, 15 July 2021, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/35703.