Aquatic Litter Materials and Sources
Plastics are the most common aquatic litter material across all environments. The most common source was take-out items like plastic bags and food wrappers, as shown in these horizontal 100% stacked bar charts. Aquatic litter data are from "Morales-Caselles, C., Viejo, J., Martí, E. et al. An inshore–offshore sorting system revealed from global classification of ocean litter." in Nature Sustainability
Aquatic Litter Materials and Sources in Horizontal 100% Stacked Bar Charts
Why Use Horizontal 100% Stacked Bar Charts
The horizontal 100% bar charts show mix of materials and sources. The data provided by the researchers was percentage data, which limited options for presenting it. There are two charts next to each other with the bar labels showing only in the first chart. this lets the reader parse the visualization from left to right. They can compare the aquatic litter materials and sources for each environment. The bars are also sorted with the biggest item on the left of each bar and with the smaller items grouped in "Others," which appears on the right of each bar.
How I Made These Aquatic Litter Horizontal 100% Stacked Bar Charts
Here is the data I used to create the charts is below:
Here's how I made the left chart:
- create a 1/2 page chart in PowerPoint
- enter the aquatic litter data from the Excel file downloaded from the researchers' website into the Mekko Graphics Data Editor
- select Switch Bars and Series to treat the rows in the spreadsheet as bars
- set chart type to 100% stacked bar and layout to horizontal
- use Format Bars and Series to sort the bars with the biggest on the left and to group the smaller segments in each bar into Others
- show percentages as segment labels in all bars and hide the smallest values
- add legend and show at bottom
- set series colors
- enter y axis title and hide other elements of y and x axes
- adjust internal chart margins and bar gap
Copy the chart and paste it into the same slide. Update the data, y axis title, and series colors. Hide the bar labels and adjust the margins to make the bars the same size as in the left chart.
Take This Chart and Make It Your Own
Download this chart and edit it using Mekko Graphics. See more bar charts in our chart gallery. Here are some other charts that may be of interest:
