CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Waste management is a global environmental challenging issue that is severe especially in developing countries where increased urbanization, poor planning and lack of adequate resources contribute to the poor state of Municipal Solid waste management (Mwanthi et al, 1997). Proper management of solid waste has been established to be critical to the health and well being of urban residents (World Bank, 2013).
 According to the Federal Ministry of Environment waste is any damaged or useless material produced during or left over from human activities. The United Kingdom Environmental protection Board (1990), defines waste as any substance, a scrap material or an effluent or other unwanted surplus substance arising from the application of any process.
Rushton (2010), sees waste from a different view, according to him, one person‟s waste could be another person‟s valuable material, due to changing technologies, availability and cost of input materials, the demand and need to use recovered waste is changing; waste can therefore be defined as something that nobody wants at a particular point in time and needs to be disposed of. USEPA (2006) observed that this majority of substances are municipal solid waste which includes: paper, vegetable matter, plastic, metal textiles, rubber and glass
Aliyu (2010) classified wastes into three basic types; solid, liquid and gaseous which could be biodegradable, semi biodegradable and non-biodegradable. Based on land use and practices in the human environment, there are seven major sources of waste according to Ayo, Ibrahim and Mohammed, (2010), namely; domestic/ residential, commercial, agricultural, construction and demolition, mining, industrial and institutional wastes.
