Who Can Reduce The Plastic Crisis?
Community Challenge: Makeover Monday 2021 wk 22
My redesign (Tableau File Here):
Reading time: 2 min 34 secs
Discussion
The top 20 producers in 2019 of single-use plastic items make 50 % of all items globally. The top 100 producers account for 90 % of the products produced. Single-use Plastic (SUP) is 98 % manufactured from fossil fuels and accounts for 1/3 of the plastic made. This use of virgin plastic means more pollution in the environment, less recycling, and more waste. A small group of people can change the world better if they move away from single-use plastics to produce their products.
Goals
Focus on the top 20 producers
Optimize my viz documentation
Complete in less than 40 minutes to prep for tableau certification
“It’s only one straw,” said 8 billion people.”
Project Discussion
Challenges
I originally wanted to make each bar a water bottle inspired by Kevin Flerlage's Creating "Filled Shape Charts" in Tableau . While the technique was easy to do, it increased the cluttered look when I had all 20 producers on the chart. This technique would be great with five or fewer items. Since 20 producers of single-use plastic (SUP) account for 1/2 of the SUP production, all 20 producers must be in the viz. For that reason, I selected a bar chart sorting by the highest to the lowest producer of single-use plastic.
Design Discussion
Data
Source
Plastic Waste Makers Index Top 100 Polymer Producers by Minderoo featured part of Makeover Monday Challenge 2021 wk 22, an excel file name Plastic Waste Makers Index.
Wrangling
The data did not have any missing data points and was a tidy data set. I set the measured value as numeric with one decimal point. I also added the unit value MMT suffix.
Code Notes
Calculations
This viz only used one calculation to filter the top 20 companies by rank. I used a quick table calculation to calculate the rank. Once I had the ranking calculation create, I did an edit on the shelf to copy the formula and place it into a calculation field. I then dragged that calculation to the filter card and selected the top 20.
Rank Calculation
// Rank of producers of Single-Use Platic Waste
RANK(SUM([Total contribution to SUP waste]))
Colors Used
For this viz, I wanted to have the bars use blue color for two reasons. The first reason is much of the single-use plastic polymers are used in water bottles. The second a significant amount of single-use plastic is going into our oceans, creating plastic pollution islands.
| Background | #FFFFFF | White |
| Title | #0F084B | Midnight Blue |
| Line | #BFA89E | Silver Pink |
| Footer | #BFA89E | Silver Pink |
| Graph | #41B7C4 | Maximum Green Blue |
| Caption | #584B53 | Dark Liver |
Final Thoughts
I went with a traditional and simple bar cart to focus on the top 20 producers of single-use plastic. This group of companies are responsible for 50 % of the plastic waste; if they were to change from virgin plastic to recycled plastic, a massive improvement in the plastic crisis would occur.
What do you think? Let me know on Twitter @YvonFitz.
Links & Additional Information
Challenge Information:
Article: The Plastic Waste Maker's Index
Data Source: Minderoo Plastic Waster Maker's Index Data
Challenge Link: Makeover Monday 2021 wk 22
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