Global household waste: insights from the World Risk Poll

Across many parts of the world, people’s safety – as well as their environment – is being put at risk by inadequate waste management infrastructure, with practices such as the open burning of waste creating serious health hazards.

To tackle the problem, we first need reliable standardised data on waste generation and disposal. However, until now, there has still been no global data source on waste disposal practices at the household level. As the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 states, “some countries have no official waste data whatsoever, or this data may be incomplete or inaccurate”.

To fill this data gap, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, working in partnership with stakeholders including UNEP and Engineering X, has included a module on waste in the latest World Risk Poll. Based on 147,000 interviews conducted in 142 countries by Gallup, the data was published in a new report in September 2024. The report - 'A World of Waste: risks and opportunities in household waste management' - provides a unique global snapshot of what is thrown away where, how, and by who, and what happens to that waste once it leaves the home.

In this webinar, the findings of the report were presented and their implications discussed with a panel of waste management experts. The panel explored how the data can be used by governments, the waste industry, NGOs and other stakeholders to help make waste management safer and more sustainable around the world.