General Information
Project description
Waste management has become an issue of national concern in Bhutan; recovery and recycling are minimal, whilst landfills are overflowing. To address waste management issues, the Royal Government of Bhutan took up waste management as a flagship program under the 12th Five Year Plan which is being implemented by the National Environment Commission Secretariat (NECS), Royal Government of Bhutan. In support of the program, NECS, Thimphu Thromde (municipality) and the Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), ran a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the effectiveness of interventions to improve the quality of household segregation of waste into dry, wet and household hazardous waste.
Detailed information
Final report: Is there a final report presenting the results and conclusions of this project?
Final report
Data Exclusion
Some weights were entered as zero in the data, due to enumerators not being able to collect waste as no-one from the household was home, or a household did not provide a particular type of waste. These zeros were removed (and instead coded as ‘not applicable’).
There were some duplicate entries in the data. Where entries were essentially identical, the duplicate entries were removed. Where there were multiple entries with the same household ID and treatment condition, but different data, both entries were deleted as it was impossible to identify which entry was correct. Similarly, where there were multiple entries with the same household ID on the same day, both entries were deleted as it was impossible to identify which entry was correct.
When weighing each type of waste, enumerators weighed the total bag of each type of waste. Enumerators then split the bag into piles and weighed each pile. There were many discrepancies, where the weight of the total bag of waste did not match the summed total of the weight of each of the piles of waste. Three different error thresholds were therefore looked at, where observations with discrepancies above these thresholds were removed from the analysis. Error thresholds were set at a 1%, 5% and 10% difference between the weight of the total bag of waste, and the summed total of the weight of each of the piles of waste.
Additional information
Who is behind the project?
Project status:
Completed
Methods
What is the project about?
Date published:
10 October 2024