Municipal Waste Disposal and Management for Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Municipal Waste is a contemporary environmental challenge globally. Municipal Waste is a major contributor to air, water, land and soil pollution. Therefore, there is great need to create mechanisms necessary to deal with waste management problems holistically. The concept of municipal waste has various perspectives namely, the socio-economic dimension due to wastefulness and pollution and the environmental dimension. The general objective was to identify practical ways of handling municipal waste disposal and management for environmental sustainability and the specific objectives were to highlight practical ways of minimizing water, air, soil and land pollution; to identify safe means of waste water treatment; to address capacity development expertise gaps in municipal waste disposal and management and to assess the effectiveness of municipal solid waste disposal and management. This researcher employed descriptive survey design. Descriptive research design was concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular group where target population in this study comprised of 500 that constituted 250 residents within Wote Municipality and 250 residents in the peri-urban centers. 30% revealed that burning of municipal wastes produced toxic carcinogens; 70% resold their e- waste and scrap metal to local dealers who reprocessed the wastes to extract e-waste and scrap metal raw materials. 60% burnt sharp objects and vehicle lubricants but this exposed them to respiratory diseases and carcinogenic substances. 40% constituted of paper, chemical packaging and insecticides. This has necessitated eco-friendly waste disposal.