Economic effectiveness of municipal solid waste management, case of Kabale municipality.

Abstract

Solid waste separation and collection is one of the most pressing problems faced by many municipalities in Uganda today. This is due to inadequate revenue by municipalities to manage solid waste collection and ignorance of the households about solid waste separation activities. The study was conducted in Kabale municipality with the major aim of generating information on the economic effectiveness of current solid waste separation and collection activities to help guide and design cost effective methods of separating and collecting solid wastes by residents based on internally generated funds from Composting activities by municipal council. The main objective was to assess the economic effectiveness of current solid waste management activities and the other objectives were to identify solid waste separation. and collection practices, residents' willingness to pay for separating and collecting different types of solid wastes they generate and identifying possible solutions to current solid waste separation and collection challenges. The data was collected using questionnaires which were both open and close ended, observation, and existing literature from the journals, websites and reports. Data was entered and analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS because they are user friendly as compared to other software. Majority of residents in Kabale municipality do not separate the solid wastes they generate because, they lack separation facilities and do not have knowledge about Solid waste separation and its benefits except residents in hotels. Collection of solid wastes is expensive due to long distances of the households from the collection facilities especially boys' quarters and residents with higher education levels and more family members are willing to pay a higher value for Solid waste separation and collection than residents with lower education levels and few family members for a better arid healthy environment of Kabale municipality.