Assessment of socio-economic factors affecting solid waste management in Rubaga division

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to assess the socio-economic factors affecting solid waste management in Rubaga Division Kampala City, Uganda. The purpose of this study is therefore evaluating the social economic factors of solid waste management practices undertaken by the area residents. To achieve this, the study collected primary data and used both descriptive and inferential statistics to analysis. For the descriptive statistic, frequency distributions were used while for inferential statistics correlation analysis and cross tabulations were used to establish association of the variables analyzed. The data was analyzed using the STATA software of which 102 sample households were selected for the study by using simple random sampling methodology. The results indicated that food waste, plastic, paper and polythene were the main types of solid waste material collected with the largest component of food waste (70.59%). Factors such as household size, household location and solid waste management practices mainly poor supervision of workers responsible for solid waste collection and lack of proper disposal facilities were seen as the main reasons for poor solid waste management. These factors were statistically significant at 5%. It was further seen that education level, gender and age were not related to solid waste management. The findings point out to public awareness on solid waste management and what methods are used for disposal. The findings emphasize the relationship between solid waste generation and socio-economic factors and solid waste disposal with socio-economic factors.