Waste Management Practices for Sustainable Learning in Secondary Schools in Rivers State

Abstract

The study examined waste management practices for sustainable learning in secondary schools in Rivers State. Four research questions and four hypotheses were answered and tested in the study. The survey design of the descriptive type was adopted in the study. The population of the study was 41, 232 teachers and SS3 students in all the public senior secondary schools in Rivers State from which 396 respondents were drawn using a stratified random sampling technique. The instrument used for data gathering was a 20-item questionnaire named “Waste Management for Sustainable Learning Questionnaire” (WMSLQ). The questionnaire was face and content validated by three Measurement and Evaluation experts at the University of Port Harcourt. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument with an index of 0.84. There were 396 copies of the questionnaire administered out of which 369 copies (58 teachers and 311 students) representing 93.2% were retrieved. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while a z-test at 0.05 level of significance was used to test the hypotheses. The result of the study showed that human waste and paper materials were the major waste in schools and the effects included air pollution and disease outbreaks among others. The challenges to waste management included the attitude of school stakeholders and the ways of managing these wastes included burning and regular sanitation exercise. The study recommended the need for more waste management materials in the schools for sustainable learning in secondary schools in Rivers State.