The State of Global Waste Management

The safe management of household and commercial solid waste is not yet widespread in many nations around the world. On the Yale Environmental Performance Index waste management subranking, Caribbean countries are among the poorerst scorers, but some Central Asian, Eastern European, African and Middle Eastern countries also rank low. Island nations, due to their limited space, have an especially hard time managing waste, as seen in the ranking.

The World Bank assumes that waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will grow fastest until 2050 due to the regions' high populations that are still in the process of gaining access to modern consumer markets. While exhibiting slower growth, East Asia-Pacific is already the region generating the most waste today and will remain in this position in the future. Both developments point to increased challenges for safe waste management in the years to come.

According to Yale, solid waste produces 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally while also being a source of contamination and pollution of soil, water, air and food through leaching, burning and vermin when managed poorly. As it is often reaching oceans, plastic waste can be a serious threat to a wide array of marine life. The report concludes that waste management has not kept pace with growing waste generation in countries of all income levels.

Singapore, Taiwan and Japan as well as the Netherland and Sweden reached the highest scores. Scandinavian and German-speaking countries as well as the United Kingdom also make the top 10. Australia comes in rank 35 while the United States rankes 47th.