Figure 1 - MSW/Capita vs. GDP/Capita for 2000, USA, Japan, Australia, and Western
Europe
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GDP/Capita ($1000)
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According to the analysis presented in Figure 1, about one-half of Western European
countries and Australia produced more waste per unit of GDP and the other half
produced less waste per unit of GDP than did the United States in 2002. The rates of
MSW production per unit of GDP were about equal in Japan (22.9 kg/$1000 GDP) and the
United States (22.7 kg/$1000 GDP).
These estimates are necessarily preliminary. One uncertainty concerns the best
way of measuring the kind of affluence that should be associated with trash production:
it is not clear that GDP best reflects this kind of wealth. Perhaps it will prove more
appropriate in future analyses to use comparative measures of consumption that are
similar to the private personal consumption statistics cited earlier. However, our