An expanding public database of plastic and other waste dumps throughout the world. The apw shapefile contains polygons for a large number of crowdsourced dumpsites between 2016 and 2021. This is a work in progress and will continue to expand.

Submit observations here: https://www.ban.org/plastic-waste-transparency-project-hub/the-atlas-of-plastic-waste

Description:

This repository contains a shapefile of open aggregations of plastic waste between 2016 and 2021. Polygons were drawn using Google Earth historical imagery based on submissions from individuals and other publicly available data sources (see below). A 'dump' is defined as a location where waste is visible on the earth's surface. Thus the polygons include both informal dumps, and formal landfills, though in the latter case the polygon may only contain the open 'working face' of the landfill. However the location of the working face may vary over the course of the year. The polygons are based on the clearest image closest to the midpoint of the year. A large number of polygons come from Global Plastic Watch: https://dev.plastic.watch.earthrise.media/map/.

Cite:

• Gordon, Matthew and Anna Papp (2024). The Atlas of Plastic Waste. https://github.com/atlas-of-plastic-waste/.
• Kruse C, Boyda E, Chen S, Karra K, BouNahra T, Hammer D, et al. (2023) Satellite monitoring of terrestrial plastic waste. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0278997. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278997

Contributors and Data Sources:

• Earthrise - Global Plastic Watch: https://dev.plastic.watch.earthrise.media/map/
• D-waste: http://www.atlas.d-waste.com/
• Greenpeace Malaysia: https://www.greenpeace.org/malaysia/publication/1233/the-recycling-myth/
• Greenpeace Turkey: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/47759/investigation-finds-plastic-from-the-uk-and-germany-illegally-dumped-in-turkey/
• Pui Yi, Wong - C4Center: https://c4center.org/malaysia-is-not-a-garbage-dump/
• Space Detective: http://www.space-detective.com/
• Alton and Elizabeth Byers: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27003482.
• Sedat Gündoğdu: https://mikroplastik.org/#
• Tajaeli Masaki - Nipe Fagio
• Yuyun Ismawati
• Tom Aneni - SEDI
• Anupama Rajkumar - https://github.com/AnupamaRajkumar/LandfillDetection_SemanticSegmentation
• Antonio Vazquez Brust - https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08599
• Nav Agarwal - https://www.onestepgreener.org/
• and other anonymous individuals.

Sponsors:

• The Basel Action Network
• The Minderoo Foundation
• The Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
• International Growth Centre