Disposal of solid waste is a priority environment issue in Sri Lanka and at present it has become a national concern. Although haphazard solid waste disposal has been identified to be one of the major causes for environmental degradation in The National Action Plan of Sri Lanka (NAPSL), the most common method of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal still remains to be open dumping. The issue of MSW is most acute in the Colombo municipal area and in the suburbs of Colombo. Except for the municipality of Colombo, MSW management is one of the largest employers of labor. The majority of the MSW management cost is allocated for waste collection and transportation rather than for waste disposal and treatment.

MSW becomes a global challenge due to limited resources, an exponentially increasing population, rapid urbanization and worldwide industrialization. In developing countries such as Sri Lanka, these factors are further affected by inadequate financial resources, inadequate management and technical skills within municipalities and government authorities. Though many local authorities attempt to avoid these drawbacks, environmental, social and health impacts are still visible due to poor waste management practices. Thus, this is a researchable problem to further investigate to identify gaps existing in MSW management.

Elimination of larval habitat is the best option for control of dengue. Community involvement and their cooperation is crucial to ensure the sustainability of such practices and thereby the community should be mobilized and a supportive environment should be created for them to adopt and maintain new desired behaviour.
Therefore, this research component aims to conduct community mobilization activities and to develop an effective solid waste management system which can reduce larval breeding sites and thereby the dengue cases in different socio-economic/ cultural context of urban areas in Colombo district.