The given bar chart compares the amount of waste, measured in million tonnes, disposed by three methods in a European country between 2005 and 2008.
Overall, all these waste treatment methods experienced a general decrease in the first three years. However, notable trends were recorded in the last year when landfill and burning continued to dip further while burning rose markedly to the top position at the end.
Focusing first on burning, this method began at about 65 million tonnes in 2005, ranking second among the three categories. Its figure then reduced considerably to 60 million tonnes in 2006 and bottomed out to 40 million tonnes in 2007. Nevertheless, a remarkable increase was seen in 2008, in which the amount of waste burned climbed sharply to the initial level (65 million tonnes), outnumbering other methods to move to the leading position.
Landfill, by contrast, started at the highest number, roughly 70 million tonnes but gradually lost its rank as time processes. Specifically, the amount of waste ending up in landfill declined steadily to around 50 million tonnes in 2007 and went down further to 40 million tonnes at the end of the timeline.
A similar pattern was observed in the remaining group, the amount of waste treated by dumping in sea was approximately 50 million tonnes in the first year, far lower than the other two approaches. This figure registered a downtick in 2006 and remained completely unchanged until 2007. Another decrease ensued, causing this method to end at 40 million tonnes, thus placing it on a par with landfill.