Personal footprint is much smaller here than in the US -- it's not just about smaller population.
Similar population, distribution and density would be Canada -- Argentina actually has 10 million more people than Canada but Canada ranks 7th and Argentina 28th. Greater industry in Canada, oil production, mining, and personal footprint -- make up the difference. Canada has loads of recycling programmes -- in Toronto you can't even throw out organic materials now -- you have a box for papers, box for glass/plastics, box for organic waste, and one garbage bag allowed per household. Yet higher pollution -- because everyone does own cars and changes them every 5-8 years or so -- here despite that there are horrible cars that are 30 years old burping out loads of CO2, producing new cars consumes more plastics, heavy metals, polluting materials than one 30 year old hunk of junk. Yes new cars don't emit as much pollution as much as the older ones, but there is a huge amount of energy waste and pollution that goes just into the production of each new car.
In Canada people are more likely to travel by plane, which increases personal footprint ridiculously -- Argentines don't as much. Canada people live in 2000+ sq ft homes with 2-3 car garages and heat these huge spaces -- here people live in much smaller units and don't waste as much on heat / electricity. Canada food waste is through the roof, here due to poverty people just can't afford to throw away as much stuff. Canada people will think nothing of going out and buying new clothes every few weeks -- here a lot of people just can't afford it, they hold onto things much longer and are more likely to repair shoes / leather goods rather than just throw them away.
Canada people will have 1, 2 or more plasma / LCDs in their house, and will have tossed their old tubes in order to have them -- here lots of people still have CRTs, which consume more energy, but again holding onto a CRT tube monitor for 15-20 years is better than ditching all of them into the landfills where the heavy metals seep into the ground.
As mentioned above -- there families will normally have 2 cars, here 1 if lucky. Here one computer per household if lucky, Canada one per person if possible. Cel phones in Canada -- change every 6 mos, here -- wait til it dies, gets stolen, or the company buys a new one. Canada: small appliance breaks? Buy a new one. Here -- try to fix it first.
The thing I miss here that has changed even in the few years I've been here is that there used to be more things like Coke in glass bottles, and then they had a programme to collect them and either recycle or reuse them. Now pretty much all pop is in plastic bottle, so that's just more waste.
However in general, people here have a much smaller impact. Live smaller, consume less. Even if you're not recycling as much, remember about the Reduce, Reuse part of it -- in North America "reduce" certainly hasn't caught on and "reuse" doesn't mean much to people either. It's more a culture of recycle or throw out. Here at least they get the two others.
