ASSESSING WASTE GENERATION PATTERNS IN BOI INDUSTRIAL ZONES IN SRI LANKA USING A CORRELATION APPROACH

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.