ABSTRACT
Solid-waste management is a challenge in many cities, especially in low-income countries, including Uganda. Simple and inexpensive strategies such as solid-waste segregation and recycling have the potential to reduce risks associated with indiscriminate waste management. Unfortunately, these strategies have not been studied and adopted in slums in low-income countries. This cross-sectional qualitative study, therefore, used the behavioral-centered design model to understand the drivers of recycling in Kampala slums. Data were coded using ATLAS ti version 7.0, and content analysis was used for interpreting the findings. Our findings revealed that the study practices were not yet habitual and were driven by the presence of physical space for segregation containers, and functional social networks in the communities. Additionally, financial rewards and awareness related to the recycling benefits, and available community support were found to be critical drivers. The availability of infrastructure and objects for segregation and recycling and the influence of politics and policies were identified. There is, therefore, need for both the public and private sector to engage in developing and implementing the relevant laws and policies on solid waste recycling, increase community awareness of the critical behavior, and create sustainable markets for waste segregated and recycled products.
Subject(s)
Refuse Disposal , Waste Management , Cities , Cross-Sectional Studies , Poverty Areas , Recycling , Solid Waste/analysis , UgandaABSTRACT
In the majority of health-care organizations including the field of dentistry, biomedical waste (BMW) is becoming a severe concern. All health-care employees must be informed of how to properly dispose of health-care waste and how to handle, segregate, and transport BMW. Proper segregation of BMW is highly essential during these current pandemic times. There is a rapid increase in the spread of infectious diseases, especially in the field of dentistry. COVID currently has a higher spread and affectivity ratio than any other disease since 2019, along with other diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. Without proper disposal of medical waste, there can be no assurance that these diseases will not spread. Hence, there is a need for a safety protocol, which is applied and implemented worldwide and their disposal in a specific guided manner. This article is intended to provide deep insight and to simplify how to categorize and dispose orthodontic BMW.
ABSTRACT
The influence of Covid-19 is reshaping our daily life. Along with protecting lives, management of contaminated covid wastes is very essential to reduce environmental and human health risks. Inappropriate management of covid wastes can cause serious possibilities of disease transmission to health workers, waste pickers, patients, and the community in general through spreading of Corona virus. Poor management of these infected wastes has created huge problems in healthcare waste handling as the amount of waste generated due to pandemic is excessively large. In this paper, we have presented an Internet of Things(IoT)-based smart framework for covid waste management. We have proposed two types of smart covid waste bins here, one for collecting covid wastes for home isolated patients and other for covid medical wastes, generated from hospitals/nursing homes, etc. These intelligent bins can capture waste information automatically by attached sensors, and the collected data is sent wirelessly to remote municipality server for further analysis. Municipality officials can take decisions such as number of bins to be deployed, at which time intervals wastes are to be cleared, etc., based on those information. The proposed framework minimizes the human interaction with the covid waste and restricts the spreading of virus. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.