Unfortunately, these same societies also tend to accumulate more wealth and use up more resources, producing higher levels of waste, which then spreads around the globe, concentrating in poorer communities and causing global warming.
So widespread housing discrimination that confines many Muslims to separate slums may protect their children from increased exposure to the higher levels of waste in Hindu communities and, as a result, save thousands of Indian Muslim babies from death each year.
The organisation's managing director, Bree Grima, said tomatoes grown in the field as those in the study were would always result in a higher level of waste than those grown in protected cropping situations.
"Steel is produced through a chemical process that results in high levels of waste gases being emitted.
In the UK, most of us prefer to eat bananas before they fully ripen, which leads to high levels of waste.
Vessels using gill nets to fish for halibut off the coast of California also had high levels of waste, throwing back 65% of their catch - because it was too small, or the wrong species.
Bram De Zwart, the product manager at Dutch design company Freedom of Creation says that until now, products have been pushed into the market, leading to high levels of waste production.
The integration of various processes is a necessity to meet high levels of waste diversion and reduce the reliance on land disposal.
These interactions result in moderately high levels of waste collection but waste disposal remains haphazard and this exposes the limits of the new middle class' control over urban space.
In the past, the inability to see the full life cycle of our actions resulted in unexpected consequences in many fields such as increased cancer rates, species and habitat destruction and high levels of waste (both financial and material).
