Modeling the Amount of Waste Generated by Households in the Greater Accra Region Using Artificial Neural Networks

Waste can be defined as solids or liquids unwanted by members of the society and meant to be disposed. In developing countries such as Ghana, the management of waste is the responsibility of the metropolitan authorities. These authorities do not seem to have effective management of the waste situation, and therefore, it is not unusual to see waste clog the drains and litter the streets of the capital city, Accra. The impact of waste on the environment, along with its associated health-related problems, cannot be overemphasized. The Joint Monitoring Programme report in 2015 ranked Ghana as the seventh dirtiest country in the world. The lack of effective waste management planning is evident in the large amount of waste dumped in open areas and gutters that remains uncollected. In planning for solid waste management, reliable data concerning waste generation, influencing factors on waste generation, and a reliable forecast of waste quantities are required. This study used two algorithms, namely, Levenberg-Marquardt and the Bayesian regularization, to estimate the parameters of an artificial neural network model fitted to predict the average monthly waste generated and critically assess the factors that influence solid waste generation in some selected districts of the Greater Accra region. The study found Bayesian regularization algorithm to be suitable with the minimum mean square error of 104.78559 on training data and 217.12465 on test data and higher correlation coefficients (0.99801 on training data, 0.99570 on test data, and 0.99767 on the overall data) between the target variables (average monthly waste generated) and the predicted outputs. House size, districts, employment category, dominant religion, and house type with respective importance of 0.56, 0.172, 0.061, 0.027, and 0.026 were found to be the top five important input variables required for forecasting household waste. It is recommended that efforts of the government and its stakeholders to reduce the amount of waste generated by households be directed at providing bins, increasing the frequency of waste collection (especially in highly populated areas), and managing the economic activities in the top five selected districts (Ledzekuku Krowor, Tema West, Asheidu Keteke, Ashaiman, and Ayawaso West), amongst others.