New York City endured another brutal summer this year, and you know what that means: a severe聽urban heat island聽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聽reported聽to be the world鈥檚 most wasteful city. Wastefulness in this case means New York uses the most energy (鈥渢he equivalent of one oil supertanker every 1.5 days鈥�), disposes of the most trash (33m tonnes per year), and uses the most water. The dubious title comes from聽a study published last spring in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
While the world鈥檚 most wasteful city could well be in the consumption-rich US, New York is an unlikely culprit. If the world鈥檚 most wasteful city is American, as it very well may be, it鈥檚 probably a sprawling sunbelt metropolis like Houston, Atlanta, Tampa, or Phoenix 鈥� all of which rate worse than New York on most environmental metrics but weren鈥檛 included in that particular study.
Among global megacities, Mexico City generates the most trash after the New York region: 12m tonnes per year. That鈥檚 largely a function of relative wealth: the regions have similar population sizes of just over 20 million and 21 million people respectively, but GDP per capita is three times higher in the US.
But waste is a bigger quality of life problem in Mexico. At least the steaming trash in New York is being put out for the sanitation trucks. In 2011, Mexico City closed its largest dump,聽causing trash to pile up at illegal dumping sites and be left out on the street,聽highlighting the absence of a comprehensive policy for urban waste collection, disposal and processing. There are signs of hope, though. A number of recycling initiatives have been launched, including one that聽allows residents to trade in recyclables for vouchers to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables.
The third biggest waste producer among megacities is Tokyo, which is actually impressively austere. Greater Tokyo has more than 50% more residents than Mexico City, but it produces slightly less rubbish. Japan is very densely populated, and so it lacks the space that the US and China have to throw their garbage in landfills. Instead, they have adopted hyper-aggressive聽recycling programmes to cut down on waste. Tokyo, which聽strives to be聽a zero-waste city, is no exception.
So how can Tokyo be rated the third most wasteful city? This is the tricky thing about measuring wastefulness: waste is a byproduct of consumption, and consumption generally tracks with income. 鈥淭here are some general rules for consumption levels: as income rises, people just cycle through more consumption patterns in general,鈥� says Alex Kovac, a research analyst at the World Resources Institute, an international environmental research organisation. 鈥淭he wealthier a place is, the more is wasted and thrown.
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