An Assessment of the Role of Households in Transitioning to Sustainable Management of Plastic Waste in the Megacity of Lagos, Nigeria

Despite efforts made towards attaining Sustainable Plastic Waste Management (SPWM) in the megacity of Lagos-Nigeria, the extant Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) practices resulted in environmental pollution and economic losses. Enquiries revealed that plastic waste mismanagement is a social problem, the implemented solutions are not human-based but mechanically-based. The first handlers/major generators of municipal plastic waste (households) and the informal recycling sector were neglected in the planning stages. The study sought the opinions, attitudes, beliefs, practices and culture of selected populace towards MSWM and the supposed roles of the households in transitioning to SPWM through the lenses of Circular Economy (CE) concept and the Transition Management (TM) theory, which places the study at variance to other studies in the area. The aim was to decipher how the households could be integrated into the value chain of plastic management to play sustainability roles that could steer the practice to become sustainable and globally acceptable. The mixed-explanatory-sequential-research-design that entailed a cross-sectional survey with structured questions, followed by Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and individual interviews were used towards achieving the study purposes. Three Senatorial Districts, three Local Government Areas, nine socio-economically stratified wards and a total of 225 respondents were sampled in the survey strand. Purposive sampling in Key Informant Interviews (KII)- 4 variants of individual interviews (34 participants) and 3 FGD (28 participants) was applied until information saturation point was reached. The findings showed a societal acknowledgement of the need to better manage plastic waste, but the society is locked-in to an unsustainable socio-technical system of MSW Management; a ‘wicked environmental problem’ which cannot be resolved through ‘command-and-control’ as practiced. Plastic waste recycling, deposit refund scheme and a shift from plastic government to governance that will seek the buy-in of the households was recommended since without it, all the would-be solutions in line with the principles of plastic CE towards loop closing were bound to die-on-arrival. A hybridization of the tenets of TMT and CE tailored to suit the Lagos context could be applied to guide the needed transition.