Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Management Practices in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria

Rapid urbanization and uncontrolled population growth in the city of Akure create a huge generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) and waste management authority has not been able to manage it properly. This has led to inefficient waste collection methods, insufficient coverage of the collection system and improper disposal of solid waste. This paper investigated municipal solid waste management practices in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling was used in selecting 392 respondents within the eight districts in the study area. Information was collected on socio-economic characteristics of the respondents; nature and compositions of municipal solid waste and solid waste management practices in the study area. The study showed that female respondents (58.2%) were more than male (41.8%) in the study area. Also, a larger proportion of the respondents earned above N40,000 per month. More than one-third of the respondents (37.8%) created squander from vegetable and food remains, next to this were plastic (19.1%), paper (8.2%) and metal waste (6.6%). Further findings showed that the majority of the respondents (66%) do not segregate waste before disposal while the wastebasket was commonly preferred to collect waste due to its affordability. The study concluded that despite the establishment of waste management authority, most of the wastes collected was not sorted before disposal while the majority of the respondents preferred to burn their waste. The study recommended that government and non-governmental organizations should pay much attention to the issue of waste management in the area as waste was not properly managed.