Social data and indicators

3.10 Social data and indicators

3.10.1 Definitions and Scope

1Social data represents critical information about the human dimension of plastic production, trade and waste management systems, including employment characteristics, working conditions, community impacts, and public engagement patterns. Social data on waste is collected less consistently than direct waste data in many countries, but it remains an important part of the plastic life cycle and should be included in broader data collection efforts.

2Globally, millions of people depend on waste collection, sorting, and recycling for their livelihoods, with informal waste workers playing a particularly significant role in developing economies. In developing countries, 15 million people are expected to work as informal waste collectors (about 1% of the total urban population). Collecting accurate social data is therefore crucial to understand the positive contributions of this sector to sustainable development, areas requiring intervention to improve human wellbeing and ensure a just and equitable transition to more sustainable economies.

NOTE: Global estimates of informal waste workers vary widely. The widely used figure above (15 million, about 1% of the urban population) comes from Medina (2008) and is now more than fifteen years old. More recent sources give different figures depending on definition and methodology: the ILO and WIEGO’s 2013 statistical brief gives roughly 15–20 million; O’Hare and Talbott (2025) estimate up to 40 million; and the ILO’s 2025 review of the recycling sector finds that formal labour statistics capture only around 6.9 million recycling workers globally, against grey-literature estimates for the informal sector alone ranging from 12.6 to 56 million.

This spread reflects a genuine and persistent data gap rather than disagreement over one correct number – informal waste workers are structurally undercounted by standard labour force surveys because many lack a fixed address or formal registration, work seasonally or as a secondary activity, or are embedded within other industries. Countries should treat any global estimate as indicative only, and prioritise building their own national or city-level counts (for example through waste picker cooperative registries or targeted survey modules) rather than relying on global figures to represent domestic conditions.

3Social data on plastics extends beyond the workforce to the demand side of the value chain. Consumer awareness, attitudes and behaviour strongly influence how much plastic is used, how it is discarded, and how well downstream collection and recycling systems perform. Public perception surveys consistently find high levels of concern about plastic pollution, alongside a persistent gap between stated concern and actual behaviour: a five-country consumer survey found that 91 per cent of respondents were concerned about plastic waste, yet only around half currently recycled or avoided non-recycled products (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 2020). A broader review of survey-based research on plastic use similarly found that awareness and concern are consistently high across countries, but do not reliably translate into reduced consumption or improved disposal practices (Walker et al., 2023). Understanding this awareness-action gap matters for national data collection because it helps identify where policy levers – such as improved collection infrastructure, standardised labelling, or targeted public communication – are most likely to be effective.

4A further, and increasingly prominent, dimension of social data concerns equity and a ‘just transition’ for those affected by changes to plastics production, use and waste management. Applied to the plastics and waste sector, just transition thinking is a more recent development than in the energy sector, and has grown rapidly alongside negotiations toward a global plastics treaty (O’Hare & Talbott, 2025). It is commonly organised around three dimensions: distributional equity (fair compensation and the ability of workers to move up the value chain), procedural equity (genuine inclusion of affected workers and communities in the design of policies and programmes, rather than token consultation), and recognition equity (formal acknowledgement of the social, economic and environmental contribution of informal workers) (O’Hare & Talbott, 2025). International guidance frames a just transition for the sector around several concrete principles: legal recognition of informal workers, income security, access to social protection, mechanisms for worker voice, gender equity, and the prevention of child labour (GIZ/PREVENT Waste Alliance, 2023; United Nations Human Settlements Programme [UN-Habitat], 2024). Capturing social data across these three dimensions – not just headline employment numbers – gives national governments a fuller picture of who benefits, who bears the costs, and where policy intervention is needed to make the transition to more sustainable plastics management equitable.

3.10.2 Example Indicators and Methodologies

1The table below summarises examples of indicators that can be used to better understand the social dimension of plastics data and the recommended methods to collect this information.

2These social indicators can support progress toward multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including:

• 3

  SDG 1 No Poverty

• 4

  SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being

• 5

  SDG 5 Gender Equality

• 6

  SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic

• 7

  SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities

• 8

  SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

• 9

  SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

10More detail can be found in Section 4.1 (Surveys).

11The categories in Table 3.13 draw on established approaches to measuring decent work and the informal economy, including the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Indicators (International Labour Organization, 2012) and WIEGO’s Informal Economy Monitoring Study of waste pickers across five cities (Dias & Samson, 2016), supplemented with more recent evidence on gender, occupational health, formalisation and public perception, described in the rows below. Table 3.14 (Section 3.10.3) compares these and other established frameworks against the approach set out here, for countries that wish to align national data collection with international practice.

12Beyond structured surveys and administrative data, qualitative approaches such as social-systems mapping and stakeholder-network analysis can help identify why particular social outcomes are occurring and where the most effective points of intervention lie, complementing the indicators in Table 3.13 with a fuller picture of local dynamics (Conlon, 2021).

13Table 3.13. Example indicators and methodologies for developing social data on plastics

Category	Indicators	Method
Employment	Total employment count across the plastic value chain (production, collection, sorting, recycling, administration); demographic breakdown of employment (age, gender, education levels, socioeconomic status); gender-disaggregated employment shares across the value chain (World Bank/S4YE; ILO, 2025); potential to create jobs.	Employee surveys; industry reports and census data; company employment records; labour force survey modules adapted to capture informal and recycling-sector categories (Dias & Samson, 2016).
Livelihood	Economic dependency ratios (Medina, 2008); rates of participation in formal versus informal sectors; income levels and stability compared to regional living wage standards; comparative earnings and position within the value chain (Dias & Samson, 2016); barriers facing informal recyclers and waste-based micro-enterprises, such as access to finance, business skills and markets (Jayasinghe, Liyanage & Baillie, 2021).	Household income surveys; income documentation through financial diaries; multi-city monitoring studies co-designed with waste picker organisations (Dias & Samson, 2016); triple bottom line impact assessment and SWOT analysis of waste-based micro-enterprises (Jayasinghe, Liyanage & Baillie, 2021).
Working conditions	Working hours; occupational injury and illness rates, including musculoskeletal, respiratory and dermatological conditions (Cruvinel et al., 2019); access to personal protective equipment.	Workforce surveys; workplace inspections and audits; health records and incident reporting; occupational health surveys and clinical screening of worker cohorts (Cruvinel et al., 2019).
Community engagement	Community awareness of waste management; participation rates in recycling; community-based initiatives for plastic pollution prevention.	Community or household surveys; waste characterisation studies.
Community impact	Distribution and severity of impacts felt by community members around waste facilities or plastic pollution.	Community impact assessment; focus group discussions.
Gender equity	Gender participation ratios in formal and informal roles (WIEGO Statistical Brief No. 39, 2024); gendered division of labour across collection, sorting and trading roles; income disparities by gender; prevalence of harassment, discrimination or safety risks specific to women workers (Kariveliparambil et al., 2026).	Sex-disaggregated household and worker surveys (Ogando, Roever & Rogan, 2016); targeted studies on women waste workers (Kariveliparambil et al., 2026).
Integration and formalisation status	Legal or regulatory recognition of waste pickers; cooperative or association membership; existence of contracts or agreements with municipal authorities; access to social protection (healthcare, pensions).	Administrative and registry data; policy and legal review; cooperative membership records (Dias & Fernandez, 2017; WIEGO Statistical Brief No. 39, 2024).
Consumer perception and behaviour	Public awareness of and concern about plastic pollution; self-reported recycling and waste sorting behaviour; attitudes toward and support for policy interventions such as bans, levies and extended producer responsibility.	Household and consumer perception surveys (UNEP, 2020); nationally representative behaviour surveys (Walker et al., 2023).

3.10.3 Complementary Frameworks and a Value-Chain View of Social Data

1Several international organisations already publish structured frameworks for measuring the social dimensions of informal work, decent work and the circular economy. Table 3.14 compares these against the approach set out in this Handbook, to help countries align national data collection with recognised international practice where useful.

2Table 3.14. Comparison of established social indicator frameworks

Framework	Focus	Example indicator categories	Relevance to this Handbook
ILO Decent Work Indicators (ILO, 2012)	Employment, earnings, working conditions, rights and social protection across all economic sectors.	Earnings and productivity, working hours, occupational safety, social security coverage, worker voice and representation.	Provides ready-made categories that this Handbook’s employment and working conditions rows draw on; not waste-sector specific and needs adaptation.
WIEGO Informal Economy Monitoring Study and Statistical Briefs (Dias & Samson, 2016; Chikarmane & Narayanan, 2024)	City-level, sector-specific data on informal workers, including waste pickers.	Earnings and income volatility, position in the value chain, occupational hazards, harassment and eviction risk, access to infrastructure, organisational membership.	The closest existing waste-picker-specific toolkit; directly informs the livelihood, gender equity, and integration and formalisation status rows.
World Bank What a Waste 3.0 (and S4YE, 2024)	Global and national solid waste management performance, and more recently waste-sector employment and livelihoods.	Waste generation, composition and collection coverage; waste-sector employment share and gender composition.	Useful for benchmarking national waste-sector employment data alongside physical waste statistics collected elsewhere in this Handbook.
Wasteaware ISWM Benchmark Indicators (Wilson et al., 2015)	City-level integrated sustainable waste management performance.	Twelve indicators, including “provider inclusivity” (informal-sector integration) and “user inclusivity” (equitable access and citizen participation).	The most direct precedent for scoring informal-sector integration as part of a national or city waste system assessment.
GIZ/PREVENT Waste Alliance — Just Transition and Recognition of the Informal Sector (Factsheet 08, 2023)	Equity principles for a just transition for informal waste and plastics workers.	Legal recognition, income security, social protection, worker voice, gender equity, child labour prevention, non-discrimination.	Directly informs the equity and just-transition framing above, and the gender equity and integration and formalisation status rows.

3.10.4 Further Materials

1Chikarmane, P. & Narayanan, L. (2024). Statistics on Waste Pickers: A Case Studies Guide. WIEGO Statistical Brief No. 39. Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO).

2Conlon, K. (2021). A social systems approach to sustainable waste management: leverage points for plastic reduction in Colombo, Sri Lanka. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 28(6).

3Conlon, K., Jayasinghe, R. & Dasanayake, R. (2019). Circular economy: waste-to-wealth, jobs creation, and innovation in the global south. World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 15(2), 145–159.

4Cruvinel, V.R.N., Marques, C.P., Cardoso, V. et al. (2019) Health conditions and occupational risks in a novel group: waste pickers in the largest open garbage dump in Latin America. BMC Public Health 19, 581. https:// doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6879-x

5Dias, S.M. & Fernandez, L. (2017). Formalization from the Ground. WIEGO.

6Dias, S.M. & Samson, M. (2016). Informal Economy Monitoring Study Sector Report: Waste Pickers. WIEGO.

7GIZ / PREVENT Waste Alliance Plastic Working Group (2023). Just Transition and Recognition of the Informal Sector. Factsheet 08.

8International Labour Organization (ILO) (2012). Decent Work Indicators: Guidelines for Producers and Users of Statistical and Legal Framework Indicators (2nd ed.).

9International Labour Organization (ILO) (2025). Decent Work Opportunities and Challenges in Recycling. ILO Brief.

10International Labour Organization (ILO) & Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) (2013). Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture (2nd ed.).

11Jayasinghe, R., Liyanage, N. & Baillie, C. (2021). Sustainable waste management through eco-entrepreneurship: an empirical study of waste upcycling eco-enterprises in Sri Lanka. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management, 23(2), 557–565.

12Kariveliparambil A, Rasi RA, Varghese N, Babu J, Saravanan K, Mohan VK and Ranganathan M (2026) Gendered environmental injustice in informal recycling systems: health vulnerability among women waste pickers. Front. Sustain. 7:1833366. doi: 10.3389/frsus.2026.1833366

13Medina, M. (2008). The Informal Recycling Sector in Developing Countries: Organizing Waste Pickers to Enhance Their Impact. Gridlines Note No. 44. Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), World Bank.

14O’Hare, P. & Talbott, T.C. (2025). Just Transition for Waste Pickers in the Global Plastics Treaty: What Is It and Why Is It Important? Cambridge Prisms: Plastics, 3.

15Ogando, A.C., Roever, S. & Rogan, M. (2016). Gender and Informal Livelihoods: Coping Strategies and Perceptions of Waste Pickers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 37(7/8).

16United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2020). Perceptions on Plastic Waste [consumer and business survey report, five Southeast Asian countries].

17United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) (2024). Just Transition in Waste Management and Circular Economy. Thematic Brief.

18Walker, T.R., Baechler, B.R., Markley, L. et al. (2023). Plastic Pulse of the Public: A Review of Survey-Based Research on How People Use Plastic. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics, 1.

19Wilson, D.C., Rodic, L., Cowing, M.J. et al. (2015). ‘Wasteaware’ Benchmark Indicators for Integrated Sustainable Waste Management in Cities. Waste Management, 35, 329–342.

20World Bank / Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) (2024). Putting Waste to Work in a Circular Economy: Creating Good Jobs for Youth in the Waste Sector. Knowledge Brief.

21What a Waste 3.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050. World Bank Urban Development Series.