Test Your Trash Talk IQ!

By DeLane McDuffie

Oscar the Grouch was a prophet. Way back in 1969, he knew the world would eventually catch up with him and love trash too, but until then, he just stayed in his trash can on Sesame Street. Today, with the garbage flotilla floating in the Pacific and even floating junk in space, we see that he wasn't too far off. Last week, we learned that June is National Candy Month, which also makes it unofficially Candy Wrapper Month, thus kicking off littering season. See if you can rank the top 5 nations, according to Forbes Magazine, that are leading the charge to dirty up the planet.

1. United States – b) 236 million tons of waste annually.
2. Russian Federation – d) 207.4 million tons of waste annually.
3. Japan – a) 52.36 million tons of waste annually.
4. Germany – e) 48.84 million tons of waste annually.
5. United Kingdom – c) 34.85 million tons of waste annually.

Rounding out the top 10 are Mexico (32.17 million tons), France (32.17 million tons), Italy (29.74 million tons), Spain (26.34 million tons), and Turkey (25.99 million tons).

At less than 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. produces 25 percent of the world's garbage. That averages out to just over 1,600 pounds of rubbish a year—that's per U.S. citizen!

We could start singing a sarcastic rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" to celebrate this "honor," but it would only contribute to noise pollution and wouldn't fix the problem. Go green. Kermit the Frog sang, "It's not easy being green." Actually, it's easier than we think.