Rural Solid Waste Management Following the Merger of Four Communes into Tay Do Commune, Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam: A Cross-Sectional Survey in 2026

This descriptive cross-sectional study examined household waste collection services and agricultural waste management practices in Tay Do Commune, Thanh Hoa Province. The survey was conducted from 28 April to 10 May 2026. Households were selected by random draw within villages, with 150 households invited in each former commune; 580 of the 600 invited households participated. The management survey included 49 purposively selected respondents. The final quantity analysis included 6,810 records from 579 households, selected from 7,199 records and grouped by waste type and reporting period. Among responding households, 92.6% rated collection services positively. Households reported that they did not separate waste at source, although they separated recyclables for sale. Burning accounted for 66.21% of the sum of quantities reported across the eight management categories for agricultural plastics and 64.56% for pesticide containers reported per cropping season. Satisfaction with collection services therefore needs to be considered alongside practices for individual waste types. The findings suggest that recyclable recovery and the transfer of agricultural plastics and containers should be monitored separately. These shares describe reported quantities in the retained dataset and do not establish material flows or treatment effectiveness. Quantities were estimated subjectively, and reporting-period boundaries and allocation rules for management categories remain incompletely documented. Pooled percentages were not weighted to support commune-wide inference.