| dc.description.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. | en_US |
