Collection of Industrial Plastic Waste During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of the Wholesale and Retail Trade Sector in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, has been heavily affected by COVID-19. Since the first patient reported in February 2020, the total case count has risen to 34,937 as of June 12, 2021. However, the effects of these conditions on industrial plastic waste (IPW) collection and their implications for future trends in this area are still not clear. This study statistically analyzed monthly collection trends and geographic variations in the total amount of IPW collected in Fukuoka Prefecture based on daily waste manifest data from a local company. We found the total amount of IPW collected decreased significantly in April and May 2020 corresponding to a state of emergency. Meanwhile, a fact was confirmed that not all facilities were affected by it. Furthermore, multiple linear regression analysis confirmed that the amount of IPW collected monthly from the wholesale and retail trade sector was strongly correlated (R 2 = 0.94) with both the amount of sales in that sector and the number of patients with COVID-19. Finally, we developed a machine learning approach to future prediction with regard to the amount of IPW to be collected from individual facilities. We confirmed that future predictions made by machine learning had higher accuracy (93.6%) than those made using a statistical approach (83.1%). This study demonstrates that waste manifest data are useful not only for illuminating trends in IPW collection but also for making future predictions regarding the amount of IPW to be collected.