Methods of Domestic Solid Waste Management in Hohoe Urban in the Volta Region

Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 2016, 4, 1-11 Published Online May 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/gep http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/gep.2016.45001 Methods of Domestic Solid Waste Management in Hohoe Urban in the Volta Region Simon Adom, Wisdom Takramah*, Mavis Pearl Kwabla, Margaret Kweku School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana Received 20 March 2016; accepted 2 May 2016; published 5 May 2016 Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Solid waste management has become the greatest public health problem facing many urban and semi-urban areas in Ghana. Great wealth can be generated from wastes if managed effectively but also has high probability of causing serious health and environmental problems if not effectively managed. The study sought to determine factors militating against domestic solid waste management in Hohoe, possible ways of curbing them and also to assess the methods of domestic solid waste management. This study used descriptive cross-sectional survey and structured question- naire to obtain the required information from respondents. A total number of 403 respondents were recruited into the study. The data collected were entered and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20. The relationships between socio-demographic characteris- tics of the respondents and their use or non-use of apt domestic solid waste disposal methods were examined using chi-square analysis. The study found that 44% of respondents disposed domestic waste into central skip over dustbins. Spilled over of skip over dustbin has caused 8% of respondents to practice open burning. 7% dumped on undeveloped building plots, 5% dumped elsewhere, and 3% dumped into the river course. About 78% of respondents reported that mobi- lization of cleanups was irregular. The result from the study also showed a statistical significant association between practice of domestic solid waste management and religion [χ2 (2, 403) = 60.9484, p < 0.001, α = 5%]. About 96% of Christians practiced good methods of domestic solid waste management compared to 4% of Muslims. The findings painted a gloomy picture of poor domestic solid waste management practice among the respondents in the study communities. Keywords Solid Waste Management, Environmental Conditions, Infectious Diseases, Methods of Waste Disposal Style, Skip over Dustbin, Hohoe Municipal Assembly, Ghana *Corresponding author. How to cite this paper: Adom, S., Takramah, W., Kwabla, M.P. and Kweku, M. (2016) Methods of Domestic Solid Waste Management in Hohoe Urban in the Volta Region. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 4, 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/gep.2016.45001 S. Adom et al. 1. Introduction A research conducted in 2004 defined Solid wastes as non-liquid and nongaseous products of human activities, regarded as being useless [1]. It may possibly take the forms of refuse, garbage and sludge. With that, it is ob- vious that insanitary disposal of domestic solid waste leads to spread of communicable diseases like cholera, typhoid, worm infestation, poliomyelitis, and environmental degradation in the form of climate change, flood occurrence and destruction of the aesthetic beauty of the environment. These are just few negative effects. At the moment, cholera disease is endemic in Hohoe municipality. Available statistics at Hohoe Municipal Health Directorate indicated that 328 individuals were infected and 3 people died in 2014. This alarming situa- tion predisposed the general public to be susceptible to cholera disease. Cholera being food and water born disease, it spreads sporadically, because houseflies and domestic animals like fowls, dogs facilitate the spread of vibrio cholerae. The measures to eliminate this menace include cleaning our immediate environment, eating hy- gienic food and practicing high standard of personal hygiene by way of regular hand washing with soap and avoidance of touching human excrement. However Cholera, at this 21st century is classified locally in Hohoe, as disease of dirty and poverty. Cholera is still a global threat to human health in developing countries and one of the key indicators of social development which scares foreigners, financial donors and gives bad signal to the international world about infected countries that are not safe for tourism [2]. In Ghana, tourism played a vital role in revenue generation towards nation building. Globally 2.6 billion people still do not use improved sanitation. 565 million live in sub-Saharan Africa [3]. Large parts of Asia and large majority of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are seriously off-track to meet the Millennium Development Goal set to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. And the region had the largest number of countries where less than 50% of the population had access to improved sanitation. United Nation International Children Education Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Or- ganization (WHO) reports (2008) indicated that only 31% of the whole population of sub-Saharan Africa (rural and urban combined) had access to “improved” sanitation. West and central Africa had the lowest coverage of improved sanitation in the world [4] [5]. That is less than 30% of the population of West Africa had access to improved sanitation. United Nation Human Settlement Programme stated in their report that a city that cannot effectively manage its waste is rarely able to manage more complex services such as health, education, or transportation. The report projected global image of solid waste and annual cost of solid waste management to rise from the current $205 billion to $375 billion [6]. A released on June 6, 2012, solid waste disposal in Ghana titled “What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management”, indicated that a sharp rise in the amount of garbage generated would come from urban residents between now and 2025 [7]. The report estimated that the amount of municipal solid waste will rise from the current 1.3 billion tonnes per year to 2.2 billion tonnes per year by 2025, with much of the increase coming from rapidly growing cities in developing countries. Also, giving projections, the report indicated that low income countries are expected to generate 213 million tonnes of solid waste a day with the population rising to 676 million by 2025. Lower middle income countries are also projected to generate 956 million tonnes of solid waste per day and its population is predicted to reach 2.08 billion. Waste generation will hit 360 million tonnes per day by 2025 in upper middle income countries with expected population of 619 million. For high income nations, waste generation a day by 2025 will reach 686 million tones and population at 912 million. The report adds that, challenges surrounding municipal solid waste are going to be enormous, on a scale of, if not greater than, the challenges we are currently experiencing with climate. Developing countries face serious environmental degradation and health risks due to the weakly developed municipal solid waste management system [8] [9]. With open dumped site approach as solid waste management method, this is a primitive stage of solid waste management in many parts of the world. It is one of the most poorly rendered services by municipal authorities in developing countries as the systems applied are unscientific, outdated and inefficient. A study carried out in 2005 posits that one of the main aspects of concern is the pollution caused to the earth, land, air and water [10]. These conditions are worse in the rainy season because of extreme temperatures, which speed up the rate of bacterial action on biodegradable organic material. Another research conducted in 2009 highlighted that in number of health surveys a wide range of health problems including respiratory systems, irri- 2 S. Adom et al. tation of the skin, eyes and nose, gastrointestinal problems, psychological disorders, and allergies, had been dis- covered [11]. In addition, dumped sites closer to residential areas were always feeding places for dogs and cats. These pets, together with pests like rodents, carry diseases on them to nearby homes [12]. Ghana’s five largest cities Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, Tamale and Tema account for about 19% of the total population and their residents generated an estimated 3200 tonnes of solid waste per day [13]. Poor solid wastes management with its immediate and visible impact remains one of the major challenges to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and many chief executives of metropolitans, municipal and dis- trict assemblies. Based on projections of the 2010 Population and Housing Census data, the current population of Ghana is estimated to be around 24,658,823. The other urban localities comprising about 34% of the total population generated in excess of 5000 tonnes of waste each day, 4.8% of households have their waste collected directly from their dwellings, 7.9% burn their household refuse and 57.6% use various household receptacles for storage and send it to designated public dumps, including communal-container sanitary sites. It was reported that 3.9% of households burry their refuse while 25.9% dumped at unspecified locations including undeveloped plots, drains, embankment of water courses, rivers, lakes and wetlands. In total,

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