Waste Management

Hannah Ritchie; Edouard Mathieu; Max Roser

As the world population and economies have grown, the global production of materials – such as plastics, paper, and aluminum – has increased significantly.

Without proper waste management systems, this growth in consumption leads to a significant increase in mismanaged waste. This leads to pollution of the ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

Improving waste management practices can also help us to reduce the amount of raw materials generated. By recycling, we can reduce (although not eliminate) the production of new resources.

To protect the world’s ecosystems – and our health – we need to ensure that waste is managed correctly.

On this page, you find our data and visualizations on waste management.

Interactive Charts on Waste Management

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Hannah Ritchie and Edouard Mathieu (2023) - “Waste Management” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/waste-management' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-waste-management,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie and Edouard Mathieu},
    title = {Waste Management},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2023},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/waste-management}
}

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