Garbage numbers
This appeared on Twitter
Now, I could just about believe NZ was near the bottom of the OECD, but to accept zero recycling and composting is a big ask. Even if some of the recycling ends up in landfill, surely not all of it does. And the garden waste people don’t charge enough to be putting all my wisteria clippings into landfill.
So, I looked up the source (updated link). It says to see the Annex Notes. Here’s the note for New Zealand
New Zealand: Data refer to amount going to landfill
The data point for New Zealand is zero by definition — they aren’t counting any of the recycling and composting.
When the most you can hope for is that the lies in the graph will be explained in the footnotes, you need to read the footnotes.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »