Talking Trash

By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager

Let’s talk trash! This kind, not that kind. Sorry to get your hopes up.

So what does garbage have to do with human population growth? Plenty. The more people on the planet, the more garbage they produce, and we’re already producing A LOT of garbage. One Saturday morning trip to your local landfill will convince you of that fact.

According to a new study out this month from the World Bank:

Currently, world cities generate about 1.3 billion (tons) of solid waste per year. This volume is expected to increase to 2.2 billion (tons) by 2025. Waste generation rates will more than double over the next twenty years in lower income countries.

All this garbage isn’t just ugly. According to the study, it’s also dangerous and expensive:

Locally, uncollected solid waste contributes to flooding, air pollution, and public health impacts such as respiratory ailments, diarrhea and dengue fever. In lower income country cities, solid waste management is usually a city’s single largest budgetary item.

Reducing, reusing and recycling helps reduce the volume, of course. But unless we want our planet to look like this is 2050 or so, one of the best ways we have to cut down on the waste we produce is to slow population growth. How? It’s not that difficult – or even that expensive.

In fact, for every  investment of $100 million in family planning, 3.6 million women are able to choose the size of their families, and 2.1 million unintended pregnancies are avoided. It’s a relatively tiny price tag for better lives – and a cleaner planet, too.

Then after slowing population growth, we just need to get everyone to live like the trash-free Johnson family of Mill Valley, Calif., and WALL-E will have to find a new line of work.

UN Report Focused on Women, Population, Climate

By Rebecca Harrington, National Field Coordinator

Yesterday, at the National Press Club, UNFPA launched its annual state of world population report entitled “Facing a changing world: women, population, and climate”. The report launch featured an engaging panel that included Rep. Carolyn Maloney, former Sen. Tim Wirth, the current President of the UN Foundation, and representatives from UNFPA, Worldwatch Institute, and PAI.

The meeting room was packed with those in the family planning and environmental communities eager to hear about the often-neglected relationships between population, climate change, and women. The release of the report is timely, as it precedes this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place next month in Copenhagen.

Ironically, while women are least responsible for causing changes in climate, as they are likely to be more “sustainable consumers”, they are affected most by such climate change, according to the panelists. For example, drought uniquely affects women, who are generally responsible for the acquisition of water. As water becomes scarcer, women are forced to travel longer distances to get water. When this occurs, girls are likely to drop out of school to help their mothers with water collection.

Notably, and perhaps less obviously, women are also more likely to suffer more in the aftermath of natural disasters. The exceptional impact of natural disasters on women is eloquently discussed in the profile of Mandisa, a young community organizer who worked in New Orleans both prior to and following Hurricane Katrina.

The thoughtful audience members asked interesting questions about youth engagement in food production, the likelihood of these issues being discussed in Copenhagen, and the effect of emerging renewable energy technology on women in developing countries.

Despite these seemingly transparent connections, it is unlikely that the subject of gender will feature prominently in Copenhagen, according to the panelists. Encouragingly, there will be a side event at the Conference where IPPF, its Danish affiliate, Worldwatch, and PAI will discuss the importance of the empowerment of women in mitigating climate change.