**6. Conclusion**

Lack of awareness and low participation of communities tend to exacerbate solid waste management challenges that are being experienced by the urban population especially the poor communities. People's attitudes towards waste and understanding of the consequences of poor waste management play a significant role in encouraging their participation in improved solid waste management. By participating in clean-ups, citizens can contribute in creating immediate and long-term solutions for their neighbourhoods. Clean-ups can serve as catalysts for permanent changes in behaviour and attitude as well as encouraging communities to adopt good practices such as reuse and recycling, which have a profound effect on waste management in a community. The experience also showed that organising a clean-up campaign requires careful timeous planning. Overall, it was concluded that not only did the activity serve the practical purpose of cleaning up, but it also created a greater sense of unity and friendship among community members. A clean-up provides community members an opportunity to bond with one another. It also assists to cross or dissolve racial, cultural, ethnic and other established neighbourhood divides. Further, the power of beautification in a clean-up campaign would naturally motivate residents to believe that their problems could be solved. This would then result in a shared responsibility for sustainable management of waste and commons at local level. This activity assisted the community to measure (hypothetical) how much control they had over their lives if they worked together for a common goal. Therefore, communities need to consider clean-up campaigns as ongoing activities that they could turn into neighbourhood tradition.
