The Water and Waste team have published their first paper which quantifies mismanaged plastic waste, from household consumption of packaged water (water sold in bottles or bags) and cooking oil, in Greater Accra, Ghana and all Kenyan cities.
Jim Wright and his colleagues applied novel methods, using nationally representative household expenditure surveys, to calculate plastic waste quantities based on the amount of product consumed by households. By knowing the weight of an empty plastic water bottle for instance, and knowing the number of bottles consumed by a household within a given time period (i.e. a week), the team managed to calculate the total weight of plastic waste generated and convert it to nationally representative annual estimates.
Their analysis finds that in Greater Accra, packaged water is a priority concern as it produces more plastic waste than oil packaging, whilst in urban Kenya, the opposite is found. In both study sites, the majority of packaging from water is managed appropriately through collection. For oil related packaging, the same can be said in Greater Accra but in Kenya waste is mainly mismanaged and either dumped or burnt by households.
Moving forward, the team are excited to explore the potential of household expenditure surveys and the methods used, to quantify the production of mismanaged plastic waste relating to other lifestyle products increasingly consumed by households lacking waste services.
