Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy Blog Features CEF
Ethan Goffman of Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy attends CEF's June 14 event and writes about his findings on the SSPP blog.
China Leads the World...in Garbage
By Ethan Goffman
June 19, 2012
As the one of the world’s fastest growing economies, China recently overtook the United States in greenhouse emissions and now appears to be ahead in household waste: some 250 million tons a year, according to Elizabeth Balkan of Emergence Advisors. She was speaking last week at Energizing China’s Waste, a forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Piled 400 feet high, Balkan explained, China’s trash cornucopia is enough to span 1,000 acres every two or three years, enough to fill up the Great Pyramid. To be fair, since China has four times the population of the United States, the Chinese have a long, long way to go to reach us in per capita household waste. Still, the Chinese experience has important lessons for countries seeking to develop, and those facing population pressures.
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China Environment Forum
China’s global footprint isn’t just an economic one, it’s an environmental one. From BRI investments in Africa and Asia to its growing presence in Latin America, understanding China’s motivations, who stands to gain - and who stands to lose - is critical to informing smart US foreign policy. Read more
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