Indeed, the low quantity of waste generated in an economy with little capital and technological backwardness keeps the waste industry from graduating above small-scale local initiatives. And higher pollution occurs because there isn t the technology to capture highly dispersed waste such as sulfur dioxide from smokestacks or heavy metals that flow into wastewater. This obvious difference is often used to extol the virtues of lower consumption in poor countries and the evils of consumerist lifestyles in the former. But the explanation is more complex. Rich societies generate more wastes because their citizens can afford to do without the leftovers, whether in the form of food, packaging, worn-out clothes, or energy.
Many cheap substitutes are of better quality.
Many items that are reused in India are thrown away in the United States because they just aren t worth very much to people who can afford new products. It may seem that way, because waste handling is such a big issue in the developed countries. Yet the much greater quantity of wastes generated, along with newer technologies, should make the waste industry more economically rewarding in richer countries. He reminds us that there was a flourishing waste processing industry decades before the major environmental statutes were enacted. And even today, a lot of waste, particularly industrial by-products, is sold for processing around the world. .