Factors influencing the recovery of household solid wastes in urban Kenya: the case of eldoret town

Many developing countries are faced with insurmountable levels of urban solid wastes especially in the residential areas. This research aimed at investigating factors influencing urban household’s decision to participate in solid waste recycling and the intensity of recycling urban solid wastes through various recycling outlets using a two stage Heckman Model. A multinomial logit model was used to investigate urban household’s choice of recycling outlets. Urban households were randomly sampled whereas solid waste vendors / hawkers, waste pickers (scavengers) and the dealers in the buying centres were sampled using snowball sampling technique. This research reveals that a market for solid wastes at the household level has developed in Kenya. Seventy two percent (72 %) of the households sampled agree that they can easily get a market for some of the solid wastes that they generate in the buying centres’ / dealers and also to the solid waste vendors who visit them to buy different types of solid wastes. Study also found out that different solid waste prices vary from household to household and from location to location within the same region. Solid waste pickers (scavengers) also play a significant role in household recycling. Ninety two percent [92%] of the respondents indicate that solid waste scavengers forage through their waste bins frequently to collect different types of solid wastes mainly for sale in the local markets. The multinomial logit results indicate that the frequency of collection of wastes by the local authority was negatively related and statistically significant at 5 percent level of significance in influencing the choice of onsite recycling of solid wastes at the household. These results also indicate that household income was negatively related and statistically significant at 5 percent level in influencing the choice to recycling solid wastes through solid wastes agents and dealers. The multinomial logit results further show that price of scrap metal and price of plastics are negatively related and statistically insignificant in the relative log odds in choosing onsite recycling at the household vs. recycling through the vendors / hawkers.