Global waste production to triple by 2100, led by sub-Saharan Africa

Mesa, AZ, landfill.

Alan Levine

One of the unfortunate but inescapable consequences of population and economic growth has been the unabated proliferation of trash. The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has become as emblematic of our soaring waste output as have the millions of cheap, disposable goods that we've come to rely on.

Every day, we generate over 3.5 million tons of solid waste—a tenfold increase over the past century. That figure will likely double again by 2025. On our current path, it could balloon to over 11 million tons per day by 2100, a tripling of today's rate, with sub-Saharan Africa fueling most of the growth. These worrisome projections, a group of authors argue in this week's Nature, underscore the already obvious need to balance future population growth and urbanization with more stringent waste reduction efforts.

Predicting “peak waste”

The authors based their waste production estimates on a model that blended socio-economic indicators like GDP and education with environmental parameters like energy use and climate trends. They considered 3 scenarios with differing populations and rates of urbanization. The lower the population and higher the urbanization rate, the lower the amount of waste we're expected to generate.