Mumbai produces 11,000 tonnes of trash per day, Cairo feeds garbage to pigs and China’s waste is growing twice as fast as its population – but it’s the wealthiest cities that throw the most away
New York City endured another brutal summer this year, and you know what that means: a severe urban heat island effect and the omnipresent stench of rotting garbage. Summer in New York makes one acutely aware of the near-constant presence of waste piling up on pavements waiting to be collected and trucked to an out-of-state landfill.
New York is, in fact, widely reported to be the world’s most wasteful city. Wastefulness in this case means New York uses the most energy (“the equivalent of one oil supertanker every 1.5 days”), disposes of the most trash (33m tonnes per year), and uses the most water. The dubious title comes from a study published last spring in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The wealthier a place is, the more is wasted and thrown.
Related: What does New York do with all that trash? One city's waste – in numbers
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