- Urban households in developing countries are burning plastic waste in their homes to dispose of waste and as a cooking fuel to a greater extent than realized, according to a new study.
- Researchers surveyed urban households in 26 Global South countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, revealing that this practice is widespread in some regions — particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
- Data suggest that urban households are burning plastics as fire starters, as a secondary fuel source and due to no alternatives to waste disposal.
- The burning of plastics is linked to serious health risks as well as environmental pollution. The authors urge further studies, along with targeted solutions to support marginalized communities with better fuel alternatives for cook fires and for plastic disposal.
Burning plastic waste for household fuel, or to manage household waste, may be far more prevalent in poor urban areas in developing countries than previously thought, raising serious environmental pollution and public health concerns for individuals, families and communities.
That’s according to a new global study that surveyed more than 1,000 “key informants,” including researchers, government workers and community leaders, from cities in 26 countries across the Global South. The researchers found that one-third of respondents are aware of households that are burning plastic, while 16% stated they’ve burned plastic in their own household.
Burning plastic “has been integrated into household energy practices in numerous and diverse ways in many urban communities,” the authors write. Bishal Bharadwaj, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Calgary, says the issue has been largely overlooked, as it is occurring in marginalized and largely out-of-sight neighborhoods within cities.
“The practice is more widespread than we thought,” he says.
Bharadwaj published a paper in 2025 outlining how this practice is growing in the Global South, but this new paper adds in-depth data. The current research also comes against a backdrop of experts warning that the regular practice of open burning of plastic represents an “urgent global health issue” as communities increasingly resort to burning plastic as a fuel source and to tackle a rapidly growing plastic waste disposal crisis.
The world’s poor are most vulnerable
The practice is “basically driven by deprivation, not only because of waste management issues, but also due to energy poverty in urban areas,” Bharadwaj adds. “Cities have been thought of as clean energy hotspots, but there are areas within cities where communities are burning plastic as fuel,” he explains.
The research team found that households offer up a diverse range of reasons for burning plastic. In the past, it was assumed plastic was predominantly used as a fire starter. That is true in some locations, but the new research found that dealing with massive amounts of waste, alongside the need for a solid fuel source, may also be key drivers.
Households are burning a mixture of items that includes plastic bags, wrappers, bottles, packaging and chemical containers, Bharadwaj says. The study also found regional differences — with sub-Saharan Africa showing a higher prevalence of households burning plastic than other regions. In Southeast Asia, using plastic as a fuel source is less prominent, but open burning still occurs to reduce waste.
Despite the survey’s global reach, the current study may be underestimating the scale of the problem, says Lisa Thompson, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. That’s because some of those surveyed may be “at an arm’s length distance” from the issue and rural populations may burn even more plastics than in urban areas, she writes in an email.
Research from Guatemala, for instance, found that among 1,572 rural households surveyed, roughly 300 used plastic as a secondary fuel, while 1,066 households reported burning “other materials” than wood, such as clothing (which can contain plastic), metals or other waste.
Bharadwaj agrees that additional in-depth studies are needed to learn more about plastic burning practices, and to investigate health impacts and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the waste burning practice. “It’s a very descriptive study,” he says. “We need to have more detailed studies [and] household level surveys.”
Serious health concerns
Though more research is needed, Bharadwaj describes the potential health impacts emanating from global burning practices as a “big concern” for households and communities.
Burning plastics in the open, without pollution controls, raises serious health questions, as plastic incineration releases very harmful toxins, such as dioxins and furans. Among other known toxins in plastic are PFAS forever chemicals, flame retardants, bisphenol (BPA), phthalates and heavy metals.
Depending on type, plastics also can contain a vast and complex range of production and additive chemicals (numbering as high as 16,000 in total), some of which pose known health problems, but many which have never been toxicity tested. (And because plastics are derived from fossil fuels, they also release greenhouse gases when burned.)
The panoply of plastic toxins emitted by burning can persist in the environment (including groundwater) and enter the food chain, with a previous global study finding that free-range chicken eggs can accumulate toxins near dumps where plastic is burned.
The release of harmful compounds when plastic is burned has been linked to a range of health concerns, including respiratory problems, reproductive disorders, damage to the immune system and cancer, though more research is urgently needed.
As households incinerate plastics along with polluting biomass, pinpointing the acute health impacts of burning plastic is complex and difficult, Thompson says. That’s further complicated by the mixture of compounds within different types of plastics. Plasticizers, for example, are linked to endocrine disruption, while other additives are known to be carcinogenic. Bharadwaj’s survey revealed PVC to be the third-most common plastic type burned, with some ingredients known to be endocrine disruptors and carcinogenic.
“The long-term effects from exposures to the common practice of burning plastic remain to be seen, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t be seeing them eventually,” Thompson adds.
There is no easy fix, but addressing inequalities in urban areas is vital to addressing this emerging issue, Bharadwaj says.
“It’s all about deprivation and the deep inequality within cities,” he notes. Given the different drivers that lead households to burn plastic, the context is important and targeted solutions will be needed. “What I clearly see is the need for inclusive societies, including city governance, more infrastructure in cities and cleaner cooking conditions.”
Banner image: Open burning of plastic in a community in Guiyu, China. This practice is fast becoming a common way to dispose of plastic and other waste. Image by Basel Action Network via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Citations:
Bharadwaj, B., Gates, T., Rose, S. et al. Prevalence of plastic waste as a household fuel in low-income communities of the Global South. Nat Commun 17, 50 (2026). doi:10.1038/s41467-025-67512-y
Bharadwaj, B., Gates, T., Borthakur, M., Rose, S., Oranu, C. O., Allison, A. L., … Ashworth, P. (2025). The use of plastic as a household fuel among the urban poor in the Global South. Nature Cities, 2(4), 283-289. doi:10.1038/s44284-025-00201-5
Pathak, G., Nichter, M., Hardon, A., & Moyer, E. (2024). The open burning of plastic wastes is an urgent global health issue. Annals of Global Health, 90(1). doi:10.5334/aogh.4232
Petrlik, J., Bell, L., DiGangi, J., Lucero, A., Kuepouo, G., Ochola, G., … Weber, R. (2025). Review of Brominated flame retardants and Polybrominated Dibenzo-P-Dioxins and Dibenzofurans in eggs and contamination sources. doi:10.2139/ssrn.5399284
Pathak, G., Nichter, M., Hardon, A., Moyer, E., Latkar, A., Simbaya, J., … Love, J. (2023). Plastic pollution and the open burning of plastic wastes. Global Environmental Change, 80, 102648. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102648
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