An assessment of factors affecting waste management practices in one Secondary School in Nansana Municipality.

Abstract

The study aimed at assessing the factors affecting waste management practices in one secondary school in Nansana Municipality, Wakiso District. A sample of 240 students from a population of 648 students was interviewed to establish the relationship between their social economic characteristics and waste management practices, find out processes of waste generation and collection, and also establish transportation means and waste disposal practices. The study found that social economic characteristics of learners influenced their waste management practices with boys participating in waste management activities more frequently than girls, students of positive attitude participating in higher frequencies in most activities and those in middle positions embracing waste management activities more than always the best and weak students. Waste generated mainly was plastic papers and bottles, polythene bags, food leftovers, peelings and remains from the kitchen, used and unused papers, old clothes and pads, and broken basins, buckets and jerry cans. These were collected by sweeping and dumping in dustbins, old buckets, sacs, wheelbarrows. Students and cleaners carried waste to the designated disposal points in the school. Waste was managed mainly by burning. The dry waste would burn but fresh or wet waste wouldn‟t. burning waste polluted the atmosphere with smoke and bad smell from plastics. Fresh or wet waste would decompose and attract house flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rodents and other vectors that threatened the health of the students and school neighbors. This study recommended that the government should formulate policies that enable the disposal of waste to be affordable by schools so that city authorities such as KCCA can collect waste from urban schools. There was also a need to sensitize school managers and administrators that managing school waste needed to be given priority to eliminate the threat it posed to the neighboring communities and the school community itself.