The Survey Of Waste-Bins And Collection Methodology In Households Of The Federal Capital City (Fcc), Abuja, Nigeria

This research is on the survey of waste-bins and collection methodology in households of the Federal Capital City (FCC), Abuja, Nigeria. Solid waste management is a continually growing problem at global and local levels. Thousands of lives are lost every year to environmental-related diseases and cities have lost their aesthetic values to solid waste mismanagement; therefore, solid waste management can never be overemphasized.Any meaningful attempt at developing a strategy to manage urban waste in Nigeria must begin with a waste survey, identifying the types of wastes, the various land uses and the availability of waste-bins in the city to enable effective and efficient solid waste collection and management thus the need to survey, assess and estimate the number of households/properties with the proper disposal bins in the city and to examine the collection and disposal methodology of wastes in the city, identifying where there are gaps in order to proffer solution on what needs to be done to foster efficient and effective waste management.The project was carried out in five phases. Reconnaissance survey; the first phase involved a preresearch investigation into the project and the project area. The second phase was carried out to acquire waste-bin attribute data from all the properties in the FCC Phase 1 Districts. Afterward, the data processing phase, where the acquired data, both primary and secondary were processed in a GIS environment using the ArcGIS 10.1 software and the Microsoft Office Excel software.Acquired maps and plans were geo-referenced, digitized and attribute data were inputted into the Database Management System (DBMS) in the acceptable formats. The data analyses phase involved querying the database using multi-criteria Structured Query Languages (SQL) to achieve end results such as percentage charts, tables and maps. These results show the areas where gaps exist in the collection and disposal process, the locations that require extra efforts for waste management due to high households or high activities, areas with indiscriminate dumping amongst other issues. From the findings, the efficiency of waste-bins was determined. The percentage of properties that have access to waste-bins in the city is 59% and as much as 41.% do not have access. Also, the average waste-bin per property for all the land-uses is 1.7 number of waste-bins.Assessing waste-bin availability in the city, Wuse 1 possesses the highest percentage of 20.9 and CBD the least with 6.5% of all the waste-bins in the city. Furthermore, the estimated household population of Wuse 1 is 8 persons per household. This is the highest in the city. Asokoro has the least of 6 persons while the CBD is zerodue to its non-residential nature. Also, considering the proportion of persons per waste-bin, Wuse 1 recorded the highest of 19.2 and Asokoro the lowest with 8.2 persons. The FCC has a proportion of 12.6 persons per waste-bin in general. The result also shows the efficiency of waste-bins in the city. In all the land-uses, 29% of properties in the city have standard waste-bins, 42% have substandard waste-bins while the remaining 29% do not have waste-bins. Furthermore, to buttress the inefficiency in some areas, the report shows areas that have quite alarming number of open dumps within the city, with Wuse 1 District recording the highest figure of 42% of the total indiscriminate dumps. Lastly, the distance and locations to the dumpsites servicing the city were also analyzed. The average distance from the FCC to the Gosa dumpsite is 17.29km and 16.23km to Ajata.However, recommendations were made based on the findings of the project, proposing a proper guide to solid waste management in the city.