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A systems perspective of waste management allows an integrated approach not only to the five basic functional elements of waste management itself (generation, reduction, collection, recycling, disposal), but to the problems arising at the interfaces with the management of energy, nature conservation, environmental protection, economic factors like unemployment and productivity, etc. This monograph separately describes present practices and the problems to be solved in each of the functional areas of waste management and at the important interfaces. Strategies for more efficient control are then proposed from a systems perspective. Systematic and objective means of solving problems become possible leading to optimal management and a positive contribution to economic development, not least through resource conservation. India is the particular context within which waste generation and management are discussed. In considering waste disposal techniques, special attention is given to sewage and radioactive wastes.

In 1987, Campbell Soup Company introduced the Souper Combo, a line of frozen soup and sandwiches. Melvin Druin, vice‐president for packaging, called it “the perfect combination of old‐fashioned good taste and today's convenience. No mess. No fuss. Easy to use. All you have to do is clean your spoon. Everything else just throw away.” Unfortunately, the multi‐layered plastic‐coated packaging does not just disappear when thrown away. Plastics packaging, particularly from convenience products, has become a waste disposal nightmare. Garbage, an environmental magazine, gave the Souper Combo an “in the dumpster” award, saying, “It's precisely the kind of product that's created the municipal landfill monster.”

This paper examined the current status of municipal solid waste management across Nigeria. The core aspects covered are generation, characterization, collection, scavenging, open dumping, disposal and environmental implications of poor solid waste management. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview of the current state of municipal solid waste management in Nigeria.

This study was executed by a combination of an extensive literature search and field study. Solid waste generation rates for 31 Nigerian cities were obtained from literature. In addition, characteristics of municipal solid waste from 26 Nigerian cities were also obtained from literature. Other aspects such as characterization of solid waste obtained from final dumpsite and heavy metals accumulation in solid waste dumpsites were undertaken first hand.

Solid waste generation rate was found to vary from 0.13 kg/capita/day in Ogbomosho to 0.71 kg/capita/day in Ado-Ekiti. Factors affecting solid waste generation rates were identified. Typically, food waste was found to constitute close to 50 percent of overall municipal solid waste in Nigerian cities. This study shows that the rate of generation of plastics, water proof materials and diapers has assumed an upward trend. Due to the dysfunctional state of many municipal waste management authorities, many cities have been overrun by open dumps. For instance, more than 50 percent of residents of Maiduguri in northern Nigeria and Ughelli in southern Nigeria dispose of their waste in open dumps. Indiscriminate disposal of waste has also resulted in the preponderance of toxic heavy metals in agricultural soils and consequent bioaccumulation in plants as well as groundwater contamination.

The main limitation of this research is municipal waste management authorities do not have relevant data. Hence, there was heavy reliance on published materials. The status of waste management in Nigeria is very deplorable and therefore poses serious threats to public and environmental health. There is urgent need for both government and individuals to adopt holistic and sustainable waste management strategies in order to safeguard public/environmental health.

Findings from this paper can form a veritable resource for the formulation and implementation of sustainable municipal solid waste management framework and strategies in Nigeria.

While most studies on municipal solid waste management in Nigeria are focussed on selected cities of interest, this particular study cuts across most cities of Nigeria in order to present a broader and holistic view of municipal solid waste management in Nigeria. The paper has also unraveled core municipal solid waste management challenges facing Nigerian cities.

Until recently, Port Harcourt was known as the “garden city of Nigeria” because of its neatness and the overwhelming presence of vegetation and flowers all over the metropolis. But today, the presence of piles of refuse dotting the entire city may have turned Port Harcourt rather to a “garbage city”. Indiscriminate dumping of wastes – industrial, commercial and household – such as food waste, paper, polyethene, textiles, scrap metals, glasses, wood, plastic, etc. at street corners and gutters, is still very common. The situation is so bad that traffic flow is obstructed, while there is likelihood that leachates from such dumps, after mixing with rain water, have the potential to contaminate drinking water. The basic solid waste management processes of collection, transport, segregation and final disposal appear to be very inefficient. This research carefully assessed the present system of solid waste management in Port Harcourt, with the aim of identifying the main bottlenecks to its efficiency and the way forward. The subject matter of solid waste management is the main object of discussion throughout this article.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the management of solid waste during monthly environmental sanitation exercise in different residential areas of Ibadan municipality, Nigeria. The study also examined how the government performed its responsibility during the exercise. This is expected to assist in improving the conduct of sanitation exercise in one of Africa’s populous indigenous settlement, Ibadan.

Collection of data for the study was through participant observation, administration of questionnaire, and interview. As a way of participating and observing, the authors were involved in the conduct of the exercise in the different residential areas of Ibadan municipality. Questionnaire was administered on respondents drawn from one of every ten buildings (10 percent) in the study area using systematic sampling technique. A respondent (preferably a household head) was surveyed from a floor of selected residential building. A total of 367 copies of questionnaire were completed and returned for analysis. Information provided in the questionnaire was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Interview was conducted to collect information from the head of environmental sanitation unit in each of the five local government areas of Ibadan municipality.

The most widely used medium of storing solid waste was the polythene bag, which accounted for 22.8 percent of all the storage receptacles and was employed by 50.4 percent of the residents. Similarly, residents employed a combination of waste disposal methods which included burning, and dumping in the drains, river banks and on vacant plots. Methods of solid waste storage and disposal varied across the different residential areas of Ibadan municipality. It was established that despite the huge amount of money expended on the collection of solid waste during the exercise, only government-owned vans constituted less environmental health hazard.

It would assist in evaluating the success and failure of the monthly environmental sanitation exercise. It would also reveal to policy makers’ direction to which policy initiative should focus. Findings of the study could serve as a guide for the management of solid waste from similar exercises in countries of the developing world with similar socio-economic and environmental sanitation practices.

Presented in this paper are results of an investigation into solid waste management during monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Ibadan municipality, Nigeria. The study was an attempt at examining the different storage and disposal methods employed by households in the management of solid waste during the exercise. It also revealed what is committed financially into the collection and transportation of solid waste for final disposal during the exercise by government.

Environmental engineering is primarily concerned with the application of technology to the urgent tasks of cleaning up our environment. Its practitioners generally attempt to cope with the problems of streams and waterways polluted by sewage and industrial waste, oceans damaged by oil spills and sewage sludge dumpings, air polluted with noxious fumes and land abused by solid waste disposal. But that is not all that they do. The recent energy crisis has sharply brought into focus the need for alternate energy strategies, including energy extraction from solid waste. Under current estimates, the United States will produce approximately 340 million tons of solid waste by 1980. This is equivalent to one ton of solid waste per person per year. The most widely used methods of waste disposal right now are dumping, incineration and sanitary landfill. They are expensive and they cause pollution. Instead, solid waste can be burned to produce steam which can be used for heating or to generate electricity. It can also be converted to pyrolysis gas or oil, which can be stored or transported. It is from this standpoint that environmental engineering assumes considerable importance. A report which presents an overview of the state of the art in this area is the Resource Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste. Other pertinent guides include Energy from Solid Waste, Conversion of Refuse to Energy, Recycling and Reclaiming of Municipal Solid Wastes, Resource Recovery and Recycling Handbook of Industrial Wastes, and Wasteheat Management Guidebook. No project of this nature can be undertaken without government assistance. A description of the activities of the Federal Solid Waste Management Program is available from EPA's Solid Waste Recycling Projects: A National Directory.

Waste production is one of the most important problems that humankind faces. Human-based activities generate diverse waste types that have to be treated and disposed differently. This results in the need to build more facilities to manage the waste and to avoid further environmental damage. Colombia established a successful policy to close open dumps and to control pollution. Notwithstanding the advances that have been made in final disposal, it is necessary to extend the life of the final disposal sites and increase the closure of open landfills. Valle del Cauca is the third most populated Colombian province, and it is also considered the third province that generates more waste. This chapter addresses the problem of locating solid waste disposal centers in Valle del Cauca by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with fuzzy logic, a multicriteria method that compares opinions of a decision-making group. Additionally, each potential location area is characterized by considering industrial and environmental issues, societal dynamics, infrastructure and topography, costs, and taxes. After applying a variant of AHP, the decision-making group was able to find that Jamundi is the best location to open the disposal center. The method shows strong potential to identify and prioritize alternative locations for a diverse group of stakeholders. Most importantly, the methodology lets us structure better qualitative and quantitative data, as well as to link multiple levels to avoid choosing locations that will affect society, environment, and other stakeholders, without considering the trade-offs among diverse criteria considering benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks (BOCR).

With the rapid development of China’s urbanisation and market economy, municipal solid waste (MSW) generation is increasing dramatically. In response to the threat of environmental pollution and the potential value of converting waste into energy, both the government and the public are now paying more attention to MSW treatment and disposal methods. In 2014, 178.6 million tonnes of MSW was collected at a safe treatment rate of 84.8%. However, the treatment methods and the composition of MSW are influenced by the collection area, its gross domestic product, population, rainfall and living conditions. This chapter analysed the MSW composition properties of Lhasa, Tibet, compared with other cities, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and so forth. The research showed that the moisture content of MSW in Lhasa approaches 31%, which is much lower than the other cities mentioned previously. The proportion of paper and plastics (rubbers) collected was 25.67% and 19.1%, respectively. This was 1.00–3.17 times and 0.75–2.44 times more than those found in Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. Non-combustibles can reach up to 22.5%, which was 4.03–9.11 times that of Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. The net heating values could reach up to 6,616 kilojoule/kilogram. The food residue was only half the proportion found in other cities. Moreover, the disposal method applied in each city has also been studied and compared.

In a developing environment, much is being done to provide for safe storage, collection and sanitary disposal of household waste; yet the problem still persists. Examines the ways in which solid waste management is undertaken in Southwest Nigeria and outlines some of the problems encountered. These include the continuous expansion of sprawling areas, funding limitations, variation in eating and waste disposal habits and laxity in enforcing sanitation laws. These and other factors make solid waste management and environmental pollution control in the area extremely complex. Suggestions are made for the recognition of socioeconomic factors in refuse depots siting and management, modification of urban planning management and a well equipped and adequately staffed Waste Disposal Agency.

This study aims to understand the perception of young people regarding different communication strategies to promote proenvironmental disposal behavior. Based on the attention-interest-desire-action (AIDA) model, the study analyses how university students react to different communication approaches used by a university aiming at the correct disposal of waste.

The authors conducted a qualitative exploratory research in two steps: (i) a narrative bibliographic review and (ii) a case study. The (i) bibliographic review was conducted about proenvironmental behavior and disposal of solid waste and response hierarchy models, with emphasis on the AIDA model. The (ii) case study was executed through an in-depth interview with a manager of the environmental sanitation area and a qualitative survey with undergraduate students from a university in southern Brazil.

The findings reveal that young people tend to prefer communication strategies related to triggers for long-term memory, especially when evaluating the cognitive stage of the response hierarchy. For example, the provision of bins identified with stickers and colors is a communication strategy that leads to a memory model of associative networks. By viewing a certain color or image of an object, the individual can quickly retrieve information already known about the act of properly disposing of waste. Additionally, convenience is a key factor for the behavioral intention of properly disposing of waste to become a reality.

Few studies have identified the most effective communication strategies to promote proper disposal behavior among young people in universities. This study addresses this gap, based on the AIDA model.