Skip to main content

A World of Waste: Risks and opportunities in household waste management

This page is approximately a 3 minute read

This page was published on

Burning waste

As the global population continues to expand and development accelerates, the volume of waste generated worldwide is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Safely managing this growing waste burden is an escalating challenge with significant implications not only for the environment but also for human health, safety, and wellbeing.

However, until now, there has been no global, comparable dataset on waste disposal practices at the household level. Developed in collaboration with key stakeholders including the United Nations Environment Programme, this module of the World Risk Poll has been produced to fill this data gap. It provides a unique global snapshot of who throws away what, where and how.

We hope this report, along with the data it presents, will act as a catalyst for meaningful change. By identifying communities that lack access to safe, controlled disposal methods, we aim to support efforts to improve equity in waste management, ensuring that all everybody has the opportunity to live in a safer and healthier environment.

Download the report

Click here to download (pdf/9.89mb)

Key findings

  • At a global level, plastic and food waste are what people throw away most. Four in five people (80% - 42% plastic, 38% food) say one of these two is the most common material in their household waste. There is a clear relationship with country income, with higher income countries primarily throwing away plastic and lower income countries primarily disposing of food waste.
  • Perhaps surprisingly, globally older people are more likely than younger generations to live in households that separate their waste, with those aged 15 to 29 equally as likely to separate their waste as not (47% each), compared with 60% separation among over-65s. This age differential is especially pronounced in Latin America.
  • When it comes to the disposal of waste, there are controlled methods (such as collection by local authorities), and uncontrolled methods (such as open burning by members of the household) which come with safety risks. Globally, more than two fifths (41%) of households dispose of their waste in an uncontrolled fashion, including 14% who use open burning (rising to 37% in low income countries).
  • Globally, smaller towns and rural areas are being left behind by government waste collection, especially in low income countries, where only 2% of people in rural areas and 5% in towns have their waste collected, compared with 39% in cities. In Southern and Eastern Africa, the gap between cities and rural areas is more than 50 percentage points.

Stories

Expert comment

Expert comment banner

Africa’s waste management conundrum

Zakiyya Atkins, Jokudu Guya and Paul Currie from ICLEI Africa reflect on the new World Risk Poll report, ‘A World of Waste: risks and opportunities in household waste management’ from a Southern African perspective.

Waste Africa

Download the report

A World of Waste: Risks and opportunities in household waste management

This report 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. (PDF, 9.79MB)

Citation

If you wish to use and reference the A World of Waste: Risks and opportunities in household waste management report in your own work, please include the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.60743/fvdc-3985

Example Citation in IEEE Style:

Lloyd's Register Foundation, “World Risk Poll 2024 Report: A world of waste: risks and opportunities in household waste management,” Lloyd's Register Foundation, 2024. doi: 10.60743/FVDC-3985.

World Risk Poll data

Explore the full dataset that underlies this report, including specific data for every country included in the World Risk Poll.

Discover country-level insights
A busy street in New Delhi, India.