Constraints in Adopting Communal Systems in Solid Waste Management in Peri-Urban Area of Abeokuta for Sustainable Technologies

The solid waste management systems in a developing country are characterized by problems of low or no service coverage, open dumping and open burning of the wastes. Different approaches to waste management are not sustainable due to lack of community participation. The study was carried out at Akole-Oke Ata, a peri-urban area of Abeokuta, to determine the acceptability of communal waste management systems that can be adopted to foster community participation in waste management. The study combined both Focus Group Discussion and Questionnaire Administration Methodologies. The researchers attended the three (3) Community Development Associations (CDAs) meetings that operate within the study area, where the discussions on the subject matter were made part of the meeting agendas and thereafter opinionated self-structured questionnaires, through convenience sampling technique were administered to one hundred and fifty household (150) respondents representing each household. About seventy-five (75%) of the questionnaires were retrieved after the meetings and the rest retrieved at different households. The data collected were analysed with graph pad prism version 6.1, to determine if the level of education, income, location of the system and family household number can influence the respondents’ acceptability and adoption of a sustainable system.The results on demographic characteristics of the respondents showed that ninety-five (95) are graduates, forty (40) with secondary school certificate and primary leaving certificates while the rest of the respondents fifteen (15) do not have any educational certificate. Then, the income of the respondents showed that twenty (20) of the respondents earn between 10,000-20,000 Naira monthly, forty (40) respondents earn between 20,001-40,000 Naira monthly and majority of the respondents (90) earn more than 40,000 Naira, while responses for the distance from proposed sites showed that 0-300cm indicated by twenty (20) respondents, distance between 301-600 cm indicated by 30 respondents and a hundred (100) respondents indicated distance of more than 100cm from their houses and the responses on the household size showed that eight (8) respondents household size is between 0-2, one hundred and thirty (130) respondents are with household size of between 3-6, while the rest twenty (20) respondents contain household size of more than 6. The results analysed showed that the level of education, monthly income,location to the proposed system, and family household number might be the constraints for the respondents that significantly determined the acceptability of establishing a communal solid waste management system. The study concluded that the respondents in the study area do not accept communal waste management and the rejection might be due to; finance for the construction of the system, as well as and for the operation and maintenance, question of who pays for the expenses and who owns the system, location of proposed site to households is another factor because of the nuisance associated with solid waste management. Therefore, the study concludes that relevant government agencies should create awareness and provide funding as well as institutional framework support and use of functional community development associations that fits peri-urban settings.