On the use of household expenditure surveys to monitor mismanaged plastic waste from food packaging in low- and middle-income countries

Background: substantial increases in plastic production have resulted in plastics proliferating of in the environment, with subsequent seabed plastic deposition and ingestion by marine fauna. There is an urgent need to monitor mismanaged plastic waste from household consumption. Household expenditure survey analysis has quantified mismanaged plastic waste generated from household packaged (bottled or bagged) water consumption, but not from consumption of other products. Methods: to evaluate whether household expenditure surveys can quantify mismanaged waste from other widely consumed commodities, we quantify mismanaged plastic waste from the domestic consumption of cooking oil alongside packaged water in urban Greater Accra, Ghana, and all cities nationally in Kenya using two household expenditure surveys. Results: household survey-derived estimates indicate packaged water consumption generates considerably more plastic waste than oil packaging in Greater Accra, whereas oil packaging generates more plastic waste than packaged water in urban Kenya. Conclusion: by successfully transferring a survey analysis protocol from packaged water to cooking oil, we conclude that there is ample potential for expenditure surveys to be used internationally to quantify mismanaged plastic waste from households. However, uncertainties affecting mismanaged waste estimates need to be accounted for.