Abstract

The growing production of single-use plastics and the uncontrolled release of plastic debris into the environment are facilitating widespread plastic pollution. This study therefore investigated the importance of plastics to households, determinants of usage and disposal. Ogbomosho North and South local government areas (LGAs) were used for the study because of the plastic pollution menace in the areas. Proportionate sampling technique was applied with 114 and 84 respondent in North and south L.G.As respectively. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logit regression were applied for the analyses. It was found that majority of the household heads interviewed were of age range between 41 years (68.9%) and above. Most of the household heads were males (81.1%) and married (68.4%).  Various utilisation such as refuse bin (37.7%), Store or preserve food (28.9%), wrapping food (10.5%), aesthetic (5.4%), food serving (7.9%) and bottling (9.6%) were revealed by the study.  The pseudo R² for the regressions, Cox and Snell (0;888), Nagelkerke (0.970) and McFadden (0.887),  indicted a good fit of the model and strong prediction of the regression   for determinants of plastics utilisation so also for factors influencing plastics disposal, pseudo R², Cox and Snell, R²=0.868 showed that the variation were strongly explained by the regression, while Nagelkerke and McFadden were 1,0 indicating that all points were explained by the regression line. It is therefore recommended that waste bins should be provided at strategic places, government work at reducing waste disposal costs and consistency in enforcing waste disposal policy.

Key Words: Waste disposal, Environment, Plastic, Utilisation, Multinomial Regression