Solid waste disposal practices of primary school children in Kajiado North Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Littering is rampant in Kenya and leads to numerous environmental health challenges by contributing to unsanitary conditions that proliferate diseases. Although the national and county governments are increasing investments in solid waste management systems and banning the generation of certain waste material such as single-use plastic bags, it is clear that the behavior of littering is a factor that needs to be addressed to significantly reduce littering. Numerous studies have been done all over the world to profile litterers and study littering trends to identify the factors that contribute to littering behavior and suggest ways to change littering behavior. However, such studies have not been done in Kenya and especially in Kajiado North Sub-County, which is a settlement area for people who work in Nairobi due to its proximity to the capital city. Being so, it, therefore, experiences waste generation levels and trends akin to those of an urban area. This study examined the solid waste disposal practices of primary schoolchildren to determine reasons for these, and identify potential solutions to curb littering behavior. This is reasonable because by addressing the behavior in children it may be that the cycle of littering can be broken from one generation to another since behavior change usually takes a long time to happen. The target population consisted of primary school children aged 6-14 years in both private and public schools in Kajiado North Sub-county from which a total of 400 students were sampled. Questionnaires were administered and interviews carried out for the younger children. The data collected was coded, entered, and analyzed using PSPPIRE Data Editor version 3, and both descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted. The findings of the self-reported littering frequency are that 46.73% of primary school children never litter, while 8.72% always litter and 25.23% litter sometimes. There is also no difference in littering frequency between children in public and private schools, meaning that socio-economic status does not affect littering frequency. Also, boys litter slightly more than girls. An ordinal logistic regression analysis was carried out between littering frequency and environmental attitude of the children, which was considered a significant factor, and with location significance values of p=0.3, p=0.49, and p=0.453 for the three categories Action-Oriented, Concern, and Apathy, there is no significant relationship between environmental attitude and littering behavior. This pointed to the fact that other significant factors also affect littering behavior and not just environmental attitude, and so though most children have a positive attitude toward the environment, it is not a significant explanatory variable of their littering behavior. Other factors examined were: understanding of what litter is, parental behavior, lack or presence of punitive measures, size and nature of litter, and place of littering. Students believe that most people have a wrong environmental attitude which makes them litter, but they recommend that proper infrastructure, especially more littering bins, to be put in place to empower them to reduce littering. Therefore, even though environmental attitudes can be addressed in the long run, the infrastructure to enable proper disposal should be the first intervention that creates immediate impact. The study recommends that county government, national government, schools, and companies enable primary school children to dispose of litter properly by availing the infrastructure for proper disposal, maintaining cleanliness, educate children on proper waste disposal, carry out environmental awareness campaigns and anti-littering campaigns to the general population, and not over-rely on punitive measures to change littering behavior.