You may very well be reading this blog or social media post on a mobile phone (cellphone for my American friends), but how many of those phones have you got through in the past year, or the past decade? With increasing amounts of electronic waste I thought I’d focus on who are the world’s largest producers of small IT equipment waste per annum.

The first job was finding data, which our trusty AI assistant did with relative ease after a bit of searching and scraping. And the first map it created was a fairly impressive choropleth map of the data except it was total tonnage, by country which, of course, needs to be represented as a rate on a choropleth. Rather than forcing the issue I decided to start the mapping process again and see if it could create a Dorling Cartogram. Imagine my surprise when it did..and all I needed was a little refinement to get to what I think is a pretty impressive end-result.

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

Please create a map to help shed light on it being International Mobile Phone Recycling Day. I want the map to show the worlds largest producers of electronic waste from mobile phones. The data should be measured in tonnes, per annum. The map style should be a Dorling Cartogram, where a single circular symbol represents each country, sized proportional to the data value for that country. The colour of the circles should range from yellow (lowest tonnage) to dark green (highest tonnage). label the map with the 6 largest e-waste producers and add the actual tonnage. Create a legend that supports the map to show indicative sizes of circle for three different tonnage quantities. Add an appropriate title and ancillary graphics in an electronic style, perhaps like a motherboard.

Iteration 1:

This is on the right lines for sure. Can you add more country circles to represent their annual tonnage of e-waste for this category? Also, please label each circle with a small ISO3 label in the centre. Finally, avoid overlaps such as in the legend labels.

iteration 2:

The overall idea is compelling, and the mapped circles also work very well. There are two main problems still to resolve though, both relating to the layout itself. Firstly, the legend circles need to be refined. My suggestion is to leave the 50 tonne legend circle where it is but remove the other two that are currently positioned across the map. Secondly, for the six countries that are called out with actual tonnage values, these callout labels need repositioning so they do not overlap other detail. Position them closer to their country circle while not covering other mapped detail.