Barely a week after the World Happiness Report for 2016 gave Denmark back the crown for being the World’s Happiest People, another report smacks them for producing more waste per capita than any other European nation.
Hmmm….maybe throwing stuff away makes you happy?
But it’s really not all as simple as that, it turns out. The Happiness title, which Denmark had held several times previously but lost last year to Switzerland and Iceland, is based not on smiles and laughter, but on surveys in 156 countries asking people to rate aspects of their life on a 1-to-10 scale.
Obviously, countries in relatively prosperous and calm circumstances will rate near the top, although TheLocal.dk notes that some commentators smirk that Denmark is happy because so many people are on anti-depressants. For TheLocal’s story on the happy surveys (there are others) click HERE.
On the trashy side of the story, the figures are for Europe, and reflect the per capita calculation of materials discarded. The average for Denmark is 759kg; only Switzerland came close with 730kg. Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbors, Sweden and Norway, were way behind, with 438 and 423, while the least wasteful nation, Romania, clocked in at just under 220kg per capita.
For more details, click HERE. And before you put out the trash, consider whether we could make our countries look better by hoarding the trash until after the next survey!
