Assessment of the generation and management of household solid waste in Eldoret Municipality

Abstract

Solid waste management has become a critical problem to authorities in Local and Municipal areas. The purpose of this study was to assess the generation and management of household solid waste, in order to suggest appropriate waste management strategies that would contribute towards sustainable urban development. The study was based in Eldoret Municipality that is located in Uasin Gishu District, Rift Valley Province, Kenya. The specific objectives for this study were: to assess the types and quantity of household solid waste in Eldoret Municipality; to examine how the household solid waste are stored and collected by the residents and Eldoret Municipal Council (EMC) respectively; to establish how EMC transports and disposes solid wastes in the municipality; to determine the organisational structure of the department that deals with solid waste management and to suggest better strategies for the management of solid wastes for a sustainable urban development of Eldoret. Both primary and secondary data were required for this study. Primary data was collected through interviews, direct measurements, and observation while secondary data was extracted from various sources including reports and records. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 175, town residents' randomly selected and 22 EMC staffs whom administer and manage solid waste in Eldoret Municipality. To interview the town residents, estates were organised into four categories and graded as relatively good, fair, bad and worse environmental neighbourhoods. The interviewing schedules were subjected to coding to reduce the mass of the data obtained to a form suitable for analyses. Two coding sheets were made for the interview schedules, one for the town residents and the other for EMC staffs. Descriptive statistics were then used through a computer package called statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) to analyse the data; frequencies and percentages were used. Some of the data were also presented directly. The study established that the types and quantity of household solid wastes generated vary with household size and level of income. They also vary spatially depending on different neighbourhoods. Secondly, it was found that not all town residents store their household solid wastes and that the majority of those who store do not separate them according to types. Thirdly, in terms of the actors it was established that only EMC acts as solid wastes management agent as there are no private firms and Non-Govemmental Organisations that deal with solid wastes management. Finally, it was revealed that EMC does not regularly collect the household solid wastes from the areas of residents, as they should, leading to the collection bins overflowing especially in the worse environmental neighbourhoods. It was therefore recommended that Eldoret Municipal Council (EMC) should create awareness to the residents on the effective household solid waste management. Due to the collection bins that end up overflowing and attracting pests and other scavenging human beings, birds and animals, the EMC should increase the number of days that they collect the wastes from the various estates as this will lead to wastes not falling on the ground. Bearing in mind the rate of population growth which is 8%, the EMC can not effectively manage the solid wastes alone, hence there is need for private firms to come up and assist them in the management of solid wastes if the Municipality is to be clean. Two areas of further research were recommended. First, a study should also be carried out on the impact of solid waste disposal to human health. This is because of most studies done on the impacts of solid waste based only on ground water contamination. Lastly, there is need for a feasibility study to be done on how best solid waste recycling can be done in Eldoret and Kenya as a whole.