Abstract:
Solid Waste Management has become an acute problem mainly due to rapid urbanization within the UC limit of
Vavuniya. Urban Council (UC) is responsible for the solid waste management (SWM) within the UC limits which is
divided in to 11 ward places and consists of 20,047 families. The UC collected approximately 87.5 tons of solid waste
and spent nearly Rs. 2,098,937 per month for the whole SWM services. Even though, the UC spent this much of money
every month, people were not satisfied with the service rendered by the UC. The objective of the study is to assess the
existing SWM practices prevailing among the residents within the UC limits of Vavuniya. The samples of 130
households were randomly selected from thetwo purposively selected ward places namely Thonikal and
Pandarikulam to get the data using structured questionnaire. The study reveals that about 60% of the households
hand over the solid waste to the UC vehicle without any separation whereas the rest of the households disposed their
waste through different options like backyard burning, composting and midnight dumping. 80% of the households
reported that they had problems with thetime of collection and they were not satisfied with the existing SWM services
rendered by the UC. Changing the time of collection during early morning and evening and increasing the frequency of
collection may avoid the improper SWM practices at household level.
