Solid Waste Management Practice an Empirical Study in Nigeria

This thesis focuses on practices of public awareness and identifies people’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour toward solid waste management in Nigeria. An evaluation of the country's common solid waste management practices and the available strategies that could promote sustainable waste management programs were explored. Other purposes of this paper are to highlight the problems related to solid waste management and important issues that must be addressed to eliminate the poor environmental practices in Nigeria and to underpin facts that the primary concern of solid waste management in Nigeria is the lack of enabling legislation or lack of adequate policies, as well as the lack of an environmentally sensitive and unenlightened public culminated in this research. Using a mixed method approach, the study evaluates the factors responsible for poor solid waste management and how effective the waste management implementation policies are, whilst the theoretical framework was used to provide a general overview of the relationship between different elements of human behaviours. The research provided an avenue for testing two theoretical constructs, solid waste and public awareness since they had not been previously tested and was achieved by measuring the degree to which the two variables mediated the relationship between the two constructs and examining the effects of variables on the nature of the relationship between the two constructs are novelty contribution. The findings are that there is a lack of environmental consideration in Nigeria's attitudes and practices towards sustainable waste management. The study concludes that governments at all levels must implement effective strategies, public enlightenment programmes, and campaigns to ensure public awareness of the danger of poor waste management to human health and social developmental activities to enhance the United Nations Development Sustainable Goals. Recommendations are that the government should promulgate, enforce and implement new laws that could promote environmental management compliance in addition to existing laws. Proper environmental management practices should also be embedded into the institutional curriculum, public training, enlightenment, and awareness to promote people’s consciousness of reducing, reusing, and recycling solid waste. This will help in the pathway to attaining the nation's sustainable development goals.<p></p>