Economic opportunities for making and consumption of organic solid waste products :

Abstract

Market solid waste management is increasingly becoming a big problem in many municipalities in Uganda. This is largely attributed to limited budget by municipalities to manage the wastes, lack of capacity and use of poor technology by waste management authorities. The study was carried out at Sofia market in Busia municipality with the major aim of generating information on the on cost effective strategies for promoting organic waste products use in the district. The objectives were to determine the source and amounts of the most generated organic solid wastes stored by the market vendors. The willingness to pay for organic wastes products, and components as measures for improving solid waste management. Identify the cost effective activities that will use organic solid waste products and components. Questionnaires were, used to collect the data. About fifty questionnaires were distributed to the selected respondents since these were representative enough of the entire population in the selected in the market of Sofia market in the municipality. The respondents also near garbage skips, heaps and wastes in the selected markets within the municipality were randomly interviewed. Questionnaires issued to the respondents were both open ended and closed questions. Direct observations were used to assess how the wastes were stored by the markets. Data collected was entered in excel where it was cleaned, coded and then exported to Stata software because Stata being user friendly as compared to other soft wares. Majority of the members of business community stored their solid waste in an open area designated by municipal waste management authorities because of the free space within the market. However, some shops and inns still dumped their wastes in anywhere they found. The solid waste management through solid waste collection services by the municipal council were considered not to be effective by most members of business community whose solid wastes were not always collected in time hence there is still room for the private sector to engage in the solid waste management practice especially storage and collection. The community looked at collection of wastes as entirely a responsibility of the municipal council but the municipal council attributed the delayed collection of wastes in Busia municipality to insufficient funds allocated to waste management. It is the responsibility of the local authority to ensure the waste management service of storage and collection is provided to its communities in Sofia market