A skyline of waste
We all know we should be recycling as much as possible, but how does each country compare when it comes to their waste output? We’ve taken a look to see which nations produce the most waste per person, as well as calculating what this equates to in plastic bottles.
Read on to discover all this, as well as some particularly impressive recycling initiatives from around the world to give you some much-needed inspiration.
See our list of sources for the data below. The information was collated in February 2021, with the most comprehensive statistics for the plastic generation of 184 locations across the world being published by Our World in Data in 2010.
10 countries that
generate the most waste
Per day
Click the per day toggle to see the countries that generate the most plastic waste each day. For each country, we’ve converted the plastic waste into 1-litre plastic bottles.
What’s more, you can also see how many popular landmarks these countries could recreate with these bottles daily and annually!
Per capita
Our per capita toggle reveals a list of countries that generate the most plastic waste per person. Select a country from this list to see how many landmarks each country could recreate with their plastic rubbish each day and year.
Top 10 countries by waste per day
China
With a population of 1.3bn, the country’s overall waste equates to a staggering 5.28bn of 1-litre plastic bottles every day. That equates to 828.56 Statues of Liberty every single day, or 302,425 a year!
Number of 1-litre bottles wasted per day
5,285,109,844
Daily waste contribution to make up the Eiffel Tower
1846%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
18
Daily waste contribution to make up the Statue of Liberty
82856%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
828
Daily waste contribution to make up Christ the Redeemer
16282%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
162
Daily waste contribution to make up the Great Pyramids of Giza
3%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
0.03
Daily waste contribution to make up the Empire State Building
51%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
0.51
Daily waste contribution to make up Willis Tower
84%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
0.84
Daily waste contribution to make up Syndney Opera House
116%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
1
Daily waste contribution to make up the Burj Khalifa
34%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
0.34
Daily waste contribution to make up Golden Gate Bridge
21%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
0.21
Daily waste contribution to make up the Tower of Pisa
1166%
Number of times waste fills the landmark per day
11
Waste generation by country
To see how much plastic waste your country produces per person each day in kg, type your location into the search bar below. The data uses the amount of plastic waste and the weight of a 1-litre bottle to display how many 1-litre plastic bottles are wasted each day, as well as forecasting for 2021.
Brought to you by Compare the Market: Making it easier for Australians to search for great deals on their energy plans.
Methodology
The overall plastic waste generation figures were recorded in 2010 and are provided prior to waste management, recycling, or incineration. To find the overall plastic waste figure, we took the per person plastic waste amount and multiplied this by the population.
To calculate the number of 1-litre bottles each location’s waste equates to, we took the total waste per day and divided this by the weight of a 1-litre bottle. We then multiplied this figure by 365 to forecast the number of 1-litre bottles wasted per year.
With each landmark, we took the weight in kg and the weight of a 1-litre bottle to calculate how many bottles would be needed to re-create each landmark once and then used the number of 1-litre bottles per day and year for each country to calculate how many times each could be re-produced.
Data
- Per person plastic waste generation was taken from Our World in Data
- Weight of the Eiffel Tower was taken from Tour Eiffel
- Weight of the Statue of Liberty was taken from Wonders of the World
- Weight of Christ the Redeemer was taken from Wonders of the World
- Weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza was taken from Live Science
- Weight of the Empire State Building was taken from Empire State Realty Trust
- Weight of the Willis Tower was taken from Willis Tower
- Weight of the Sydney Opera House was taken from GIDS
- Weight of the Burj Khalifa was taken from Burj Khalifa
- Weight of the Golden Gate Bridge was taken from CNN Editorial Research
- Weight of the Tower of Pisa was taken from Tower of Pisa