Abstract:
Effective waste management is important to achieving the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in industrial settings where waste
generation is significant. Various studies in Sri Lanka have identified environmental
issues caused by industrial waste and emphasized the need for more understanding of
industry-specific waste generation patterns for effective waste management.
Therefore, the identification of a correlation between industrial concentration in
selected areas and the types of waste generated across different industrial sectors
should be vital. The objectives of this study were to analyze the correlation between
the number of industrial establishments and the amount of waste generated under
various categories in Board of Investment (BOI) industrial zones and to trace the
trends of waste generation by industrial type and category. Data on the number of
industrial operations and waste quantities categorized as solid waste, fabric waste,
biodegradable waste, treatment plant sludge, in-house treatment plant sludge,
hazardous waste, and other waste were collected from official BOI databases and
analyzed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient to assess the relationships. The
analysis reported strong positive correlations between the number of industries and
multiple waste categories, notably hazardous waste (r = 0.87), in-house treatment
plant sludge (r = 0.78), and biodegradable waste (r = 0.75). These results indicate
that, in the studied industrial zones, higher industrial concentration is closely
associated with increased and more complex patterns of waste generation. A
particularly strong correlation between in-house sludge and hazardous waste (r =
0.90) highlights the complex nature of industrial waste streams, which generally
contain both hazardous and non-hazardous components due to diverse production and
treatment processes. Also, solid waste reported a high correlation with biodegradable
waste (r = 0.91), emphasizing the significant organic matter fraction within industrial
solid waste. It also identified fabric waste as closely linked to hazardous and other
waste types, suggesting that industries producing fabric waste tend to generate diverse
and potentially harmful substances. Conversely, weaker correlations between
treatment plant sludge and fabric or other waste categories suggest the need for
distinct management pathways for sludge. The findings emphasize the interconnected
nature of industrial waste categories and highlight the necessity of integrated waste
management approaches.
