Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2012, as a news piece on a warning of a possible sharp fall in US GDP. The prediction can now be checked against what actually happened.
Most of us see garbage only for what it is: garbage. We’re talking about the waste we produce every day. According to Convergex, this waste acts as a mirror of GDP (gross domestic product), and so far the margin of error has been 0%. The logic is very simple: the more garbage we produce, the greater the economic growth, and conversely, when the amount of waste we generate falls considerably, the economy goes into recession.
The Association of American Railroads has issued a warning about a possible sharp fall in US GDP, since the correlation between waste traffic and GDP is completely exact, with peaks and dips running perfectly parallel. If the trend continues, US GDP will soon follow waste traffic in the same direction.
Logically, this economic indicator is accurate as a matter of plain common sense. In Spain, waste traffic peaked during the property boom, since construction generated all kinds of heavy waste. Factories never stopped producing (more garbage), and families got rid of old things to replace them with new ones (furniture, sofas, beds…), so obviously, the more people buy, the more is manufactured and, consequently, the more waste there is.
You only need to look at the garbage bins on your own street. Remember when you had to leave your rubbish outside the bin because it was completely full? You don’t have that problem now, do you? That’s the drop in consumption. People buy less and make much more of what they already have, so we don’t generate waste. A bad sign for economic growth.
Some say this incredible fall could be because people now recycle much more, but according to Convergex, recycling has been subtracted from this indicator for more than 10 years, so the worst predictions for the US economy will probably come true.
And by the way, needless to say, don’t bother filling the bins with old clothes and useless junk in the hope of boosting Spain’s GDP, because I don’t think it’ll work 🙂
