Economics Of Waste Management In Lagos State Nigeria[1980-2003]

ABSTRACT

Solid wastes management in most states of Nigeria especially in Lagos State is unsatisfactory despite consuming a relatively high proportion of the State's budget. This tends to 'crowd out other social amenities. Most of the attempts made to improve performance in the discharge of solid waste services have focused mainly on supply-side activities such as collection and disposal capacity which have failed to yield very desirable results. On this premise, this thesis therefore explored a different tool of waste management by considering the demand-side approach into the planning process. This analysis questions the initial assumptions that households and firms accord low priority to solid wastes management services as compared with other composite goods and are quite unwilling to pay for it. It also calls to question the command-and-control approach to solid wastes management. To achieve our objectives therefore, the study investigates the relationship between waste generation per capita and its determinants in Lagos State which include among others, the socioeconomic variables such as income and urbanization, weather variables in the form of precipitation and temperature levels and; economic instruments such as price of recyclables (recycling incentive) and user fee.