Survey Results

Introduction

As part of this study the team conducted a survey to identify the general consensus of the mexican population regarding some of their opinions about water quality where they live. Furthermore, the survey seeked to identify the average quantity of plastic waste that people generate and are exposed to; plus also identifying their perception about their plastic production compared to what they actually discard.

Demographics

It was observed that the majority of respondents were female with a total of 271 women compared with 186 male respondents. This is a parameter to consider in the rest of the survey results since most of the responses were given by women.

For analysis purposes, the population for this study was divided into two groups: younger than 30 years old, and equal or older than 30 years old. This parameter is important because different types of perspectives are analyzed according to age because it can be a parameter that intervenes heavily with the type of responses discussed below.

Furthermore, we were able to identify that around 40% of the respondents claimed to be following a low-impact lifestyle. This fact was important since it really helped us to identify whether or not people who claimed to have a low-impact lifestyle were actually producing less plastics than the average person.

We also divided our population regarding their plastic production. High plastic producers were those who produced more plastics than the average person per week, whereas Low producers were those who produced less than the average person.

Finally, the population of this survey was also divided according to the potability of the tap water that they have access to. As it was seen, the proportion of people having access to potable and non-potable access was similar.

Outstanding results

This first map illustrates overall plastic production by State in Mexico. As it can be seen, greater quantity of plastics is produced near metropolitan areas. Plus some tourist areas, such as Quintana Roo, are the higher producers of plastic in Mexico.

This graph demonstrates that, when dividing the population of the survey by how much plastic they produce in a week (Hig producer vs. Low Producer), people who produce less waste are more likely to claim to live a low-impact lifestyle. Furthermore, even though 72 respondents claimed to live a low-impact lifestyle, their habits indicated that they produced more plastics than the average person.

In addition, it is observed from this graph that the consumption of plastic bottles is located within the first 3 types of garbage that is most frequent plastic products, which tells us of an even greater demand for plastic within the mexican population, still increasing the rate of diseases and pollution to the environment disposed of a week being extremely important because this waste of plastic products from water bottles tells us of a frequent consumption of these, which can generate great alterations to the human body and it is alarming that the second most important parameter was the disposal of products of different ones.

In addition, it is observed from this graph that the consumption of plastic bottles is located within the first 3 types of garbage that is most frequent plastic products, which tells us of an even greater demand for plastic within the mexican population, still increasing the rate of diseases and pollution to the environment disposed of a week being extremely important because this waste of plastic products from water bottles tells us of a frequent consumption of these, which can generate great alterations to the human body and it is alarming that the second most important parameter was the disposal of products of different ones.

As for waste from plastic bottles, most of the people surveyed generated a minimum of plastic water bottles, between 0 and 1. However, the average plastic bottles that a person discards according to this survey are 2.72 bottles per week.

When dividing how many plastic bottles on average the people generate by potable water availability, it can be seen, surprisingly, that people with access to potable tap water significantly use more plastic water bottles.

As we can see from the mean summary table above, most people don’t agree that they produce more plastics than the average person. Furthermore, the surveyed people tend to strongly agree that plastic can have a negative impact on health. Finally, the most important thing that we take from this tab is that, most of the people are oblivious of what microplastics are.

Here it is observed that the trend about consuming food wrapped in plastic lies at around 2 items per person per week.

Here it is displayed that more than a third of respondents usually use plastic water bottles for daily consumption. With the rest using other type of containers for water.

Water Brands

A comparison between the three most popular water brands from this survey was drawn. Overall, the water brand #3 had the best ratings across all statements, while water brand #2 had the worst.

Water brand #1 had somewhat oblivious results, trending to low ones. It’s strongest attribute was that people somewhat agreed on distributing high quality water.

Water brand #2 presented the lowest ratings across these three main water brands, this brand was considered to be the cheapest of all, plus it was the one perceived to have the lowest quality water.

Finally, Brand #3 was considered to have the highest overall rating, being it’s strongest point that it’s the most associated with higher water quality and the quality of the manufacture of their bottles.

CONCLUSION

The results of this survey showed that, even though some people claim to believe that they don't produce that much plastic waste, they indeed produce more waste than the average person. Simultaneously, we discovered they people who claimed to have a low-impact lifestlyle actually produce way less plastic than the average person.

This survey was also useful to identify which water brands are the most well-known and how they are rated by the Mexican population. Furthermore, we were able to identify how the water brands were compared by the population across different characteristics