Operational management and spoiled food waste flows at the Port of Cotonou, Benin (2020-2023)

This dataset provides four tables documenting the operational management and waste flows of spoiled food and non-food products (SFW) processed at the Port of Cotonou, Benin, between 2020 and 2023. Data were collected by the first author during an internship at the licensed operator in charge of SFW destruction, under the Long-Stay Goods Programme (MLS) launched with the Autonomous Port of Cotonou in September 2020.

The workbook contains four sheets. S1b provides monthly SFW destruction flows in tonnes for 2020-2022 in long (tidy) format, comprising 36 monthly observations. S2 describes the typology of the 52 commodity types processed between 2020 and 2022, with their assigned disposal mode. S3 presents a summary distribution of these 52 types by disposal mode. S4 documents individual destruction operations from 2022 to 2023 (commodity, date, container size), with financial columns and commercially identifying fields removed from this public release.

Total volume destroyed over the active period is 2,353.3 tonnes, with 85.4% concentrated in 2021. Technical landfilling (Takon facility, Sakété) is the dominant disposal mode, covering 65.4% of commodity types. Of the 52 types recorded, 34 are food products (65.4%) and 18 are non-food products.

This is an anonymised public release: the licensed operator is not named and commercially identifying columns have been removed. No commercially sensitive data are included. An R script fully reproducing all calculations and figures from the associated manuscript is provided alongside the dataset.

Funding: IDRC Canada, FGePro Project (Process Engineering Training); C2EA / Institut National de l'Eau (INE), Université d'Abomey-Calavi.