The impacts of Covid-19 on the household behavior and household waste in Turkey

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19, many radical changes have occurred in our daily life. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on the household behavior and waste changes in the largest city of Turkey, Istanbul. Research data were collected through an online survey, from 946 participants and frequency and logistic regression analyses were conducted. As a result of the frequency analyses of the data, it was revealed that mask, glove, disposable bag usage, cooking at home, online shopping, cargo arrival, dishwasher and washing machine usage increased; on the contrary, ordering food from outside decreased among the participants. In line with these behavioral changes, we found that medical, food, disposable bag and plastic wastes generated by the sampled households increased, as well. Illuminating the results of frequency distributions, we conducted logistic regression analyses to explain the changes in each household behavior as well as waste disposal based on income and size of households during this pandemic period. The empirical findings of the present study highlight the importance of developing special management strategies for medical, food and plastic wastes and for households with different socio-economic backgrounds by local and central authorities in order to reduce the negative environmental impacts of COVID-19.