Culture of municipal solid waste management : analysis of values, attitudes and behaviours

Abstract

Developing countries like Sri Lanka are having huge stinking garbage dumps which is a “silent looming crisis” as cities grow day by day. Even though, there are strategies already implemented in municipal solid waste management (MSWM), most of those were either failed or not sufficient to address the current waste crisis. This is mainly due to the poor planning and implementation practices in MSWM, where the relevant authorities are responsible. They are not enthusiastic in pursuing solutions for the growing public concerns towards MSWM. Because they are not aware about the exact importance of proper MSWM for the country. Thus, there is a need of an attitudinal and behavioural change to overcome this problem. Despite the availability of research on community attitudes and behaviours in MSWM, a gap in literature could be identified in identifying the values, attitudes, and behaviours of authorities in planning and implementation of MSWM in Sri Lanka. Therefore, this research intends to provide a culture-based solution for MSWM by investigating values, attitudes, and behaviours of authority personals in MSWM. A Comprehensive literature review was conducted to review the concepts of value, attitude, and behaviour in MSWM context, including the waste management strategies adopted in MSWM. Positioning this research in an interpretivist stance, a qualitative approach was used adapting qualitative survey as the research strategy to achieve the aim of the research. Seventeen semi structured interviews were held with the key authorities who responsible for planning and implementation of MSWM in Sri Lanka. Manual content analysis was used to analyse the results of qualitative survey. The verdicts of the research revealed the common MSWM practices in Sri Lanka, which are open dumping, landfilling, composting, adaptation of 3R concept and so on along with the accompanying values, attitudes, and behaviours. Positive values, attitudes and behaviours along with noteworthy negative values, attitudes and behaviours such as community cooperation is less in MSWM, open dumping of waste is the easiest method of getting rid of waste and adapting new technologies is not affordable to Sri Lanka, which is result in the behaviours like open dumping of waste without any treatment and reluctancy in allocating fund for latest technologies in MSWM. Although many positive values are held by Sri Lankans in MSWM, such values are not reflected through the attitudes and behaviours. Moreover, it was revealed through the findings that future positive behaviour of an individual influences changing the attitude of another while creating a positive value to the authorities responsible for MSWM. Thus, the research could be concluded that behaviours should be improved as it was already revealed that the cycle of culture management can do a great influence on managing MSW. Finally, the study was concluded by proposing strategies to manage MSW from a cultural perspective by refining the conceptual framework. The knowledge generated through this research can be used by respective authorities in Sri Lanka in successful planning and implementing MSWM strategies.