Situation

People think waste amount drives pollution
Question: Does income level affect the relationship between plastic waste generation and pollution?

Task


Test relationship between waste and pollution

Action


Show relationship + income differences

Core relationship

Correlation

## [1] -0.6900423

Income-Level Insight

Lowest Pollution

## # A tibble: 10 × 4
##    Entity      pollution waste income               
##    <chr>           <dbl> <dbl> <chr>                
##  1 Gibraltar      0.0284  53.3 High-income countries
##  2 Singapore      0.0296  63.1 High-income countries
##  3 Macao          0.0380  84.8 High-income countries
##  4 Bahrain        0.0386  57.6 High-income countries
##  5 Monaco         0.0415  80.9 High-income countries
##  6 Hong Kong      0.0459  91.4 High-income countries
##  7 Japan          0.0495  47.0 High-income countries
##  8 South Korea    0.0554  48.7 High-income countries
##  9 Taiwan         0.0588  61.5 High-income countries
## 10 Qatar          0.0620  75.0 High-income countries

Highest Pollution

## # A tibble: 10 × 4
##    Entity            pollution waste income                       
##    <chr>                 <dbl> <dbl> <chr>                        
##  1 Cambodia               25.2  51.7 Lower-middle-income countries
##  2 Paraguay               23.4  46.1 Upper-middle-income countries
##  3 Equatorial Guinea      20.8  43.8 Upper-middle-income countries
##  4 South Sudan            20.4  33.0 Low-income countries         
##  5 Haiti                  20.3  27.4 Lower-middle-income countries
##  6 Vanuatu                20.1  31.0 Lower-middle-income countries
##  7 Lesotho                19.9  24.7 Lower-middle-income countries
##  8 Kyrgyzstan             18.8  46.4 Lower-middle-income countries
##  9 Iraq                   18.8  42.3 Upper-middle-income countries
## 10 Mauritania             18.7  24.6 Lower-middle-income countries

Result


Although higher waste generation might seem like it should increase pollution, the analysis shows the opposite trend, with a strong negative correlation (-0.69).

reference link: https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

Data source: Cottom et al. (2024)