Assessment of knowledge attitudes and associated factors on solid waste management among market vendors in Wandegeya Market..

Abstract

Solid waste management is increasingly becoming a public health burden in Uganda due to high rates of improper solid waste disposal. This problem is attributed to the increasing population, urbanization and poor solid waste management systems. In Uganda, the urban population has grown by about 4.5 million between 2002 (2.9 million) and 2014 (7.4 m) speeding up the amount of waste generation and the demand for food. The increased solid waste generation from an ever-growing Ugandan population means the problem is only going to get worse unless proper solid waste management is integrated. In spite of much evidence on the knowledge and attitudes of consumers on waste management, little literature is known about waste management knowledge and attitude of market vendors and the area remains understudied. This study assesses the knowledge and attitudes of market vendors in Wandegeya market towards solid waste management, in order to look for possible solutions to the poor solid waste management problem. Data was collected from 384 market vendors using researcher-administered questionnaires and key informant interviews and the collected data was cleaned and coded in Microsoft excel before being exported to SPSS (version 20) for analysis. Chi-square test was done to determine the relationship between the independent variables and vendors knowledge and attitudes towards solid waste management. Majority of the vendors (94.79%) had excellent knowledge and 67.4% had excellent attitudes towards solid waste management. There was no significant relationship between a vendor’s knowledge about solid waste management with age (p = 0.858), and education level (p = 0.537). There was a significant relationship between a vendor’s sex and their knowledge about solid waste management and his education level (p = 0.102) and sex (p = 0.232). The vendors’ age (p = 0.004) and education level (p = 0.000) were also found to have a significant relationship with vendors’ attitudes towards solid waste management. Based on these findings, the researcher recommends that similar studies be conducted on a bigger sample and in different parts of the country, and more campaigns to be carried out aimed at improving people’s knowledge and attitudes about solid waste management.