Abstract

In today’s swiftly growing and urbanizing world with new technologies and industries every day, the generation of waste is a major concern as the daily waste generation is increasing rapidly. Chennai is one of the most densely populated cities of India, which faces the significant problems of waste generation, collection and treatment of household waste. This study aims to analyse household waste management practices, assess the level of awareness regarding efficient household waste management practices and compare the important provisions of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 and the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026. Convenience sampling method was used to collect primary data from 120 households from different areas of Chennai city by using Questionnaire. The findings of the study reveals that the most commonly generated household waste among the respondents is plastic waste (82.5%) and on an average 1.33 kg of household waste is generated in a day. Further, among the respondents who segregate household waste, segregation of electronic waste (38.2%), biomedical waste (27.6%) and hazardous waste (26.3%) is considerably lower. Door-to-door corporation collection is the most commonly adopted waste disposal method among the respondents and around 51% of the respondents stated that they give their household waste for recycling. The study also reveals that the mean percentage of awareness on efficient household waste management practices is 77.36 and majority of the respondents (61.7%) fall under high awareness category.

Authors

L. Cesis Dastan, V. Bala Kumar, R. Nisha
Presidency College, India

Keywords

Household Waste Management, Reuse, Recycle, Sustainability, Waste Segregation