The world’s growing municipal solid waste: trends and impacts

Abstract Global municipal waste production causes multiple environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, ocean plastic accumulation, and nitrogen pollution. However, estimates of both past and future development of waste and pollution are scarce. We apply compositional Bayesian regression to produce the first estimates of past and future (1965–2100) waste generation disaggregated by composition and treatment, along with resultant environmental impacts, for every country. We find that total wastes grow at declining speed with economic development, and that global waste generation has increased from 635 Mt in 1965 to 1999 Mt in 2015 and reaches 3539 Mt by 2050 (median values, middle-of-the-road…