Assessment Of Household Solid Waste Management Practices In The Sunyani West District

ABSTRACT Background: Sanitation is an important foundation for health, economic development and well-being hence waste management (Bartram &Cairncross2010; WSP 2010).The perception of household waste as unwanted material with no intrinsic value has dominated attitudes towards it management. Waste management is therefore defined as the collection, storage, transportation, processing, treatment, recycling and final disposal of waste. The study was conducted in the sunyani west district. The objective of the study is to assess household solid waste management practices in the sunyani west district. Methods: The study employed a descriptive cross sectional study design and used mixed methods such as quantitative and qualitative for data collection. The sample size for the study is 384. The sampling method used was simple random sampling method. Ethical approval was received from the ethics review committee of the Ghana health service for this study. Permission was also sought from district health directorate as well as district assembly. Data was analyzed using stata version 13. Results: the study reveals that more than half (52.30%) of the waste generated by households are food debris, (28.60%) are plastic waste and (19.10%) for that of bottles and cans. More than half (73.4%) of the participant dispose their waste indiscriminately and that of designated site contributed to (26.6%). Majority of the respondent engages in inappropriate practices (57.0%) of household solid waste management practices whiles that of appropriate practices contributed to 43.0% in the study. It was discovered that gender, level of education, monthly earnings, residential unit and household sizes were significantly associated with household solid waste management practices (p