Environmental degradation may happen due to natural calamities or human behaviours through waste disposal and pollution where the quality of environment is tampered with by reducing the aesthetic value and this affects both human and animal health. Environmental degradation has impacts that are divergent for various social groups, and in different contexts. Some groups may benefit from changes in price structures or in social relations that result from scarcities caused by environmental stress. More commonly, however, environmental decline adversely affects the health, well-being and livelihood opportunities of the individuals affected by pollution or natural resource depletion. The health hazards posed by pollution and reduced water availability, as well as by a decline in nutritional status, are substantial in many areas. 

In most communities across Freetown, Sierra Leone, though the residents are dependent on the physical environment for their survival, they have however failed to tame it controllable. Their desire to satisfy their needs have led to increased human use of the environment. Human negligence in addition to collective actions for economic gains has put the environment at disadvantage. Many of the natural ecosystems have been interfered with. This has been through encroachment on forest reserves, degradation of wetlands, uncontrollable expansion of infrastructural sites leading to soil erosion and soil exhaustion, digging, overgrazing and burning of grasslands leading to bear soils that are susceptible to erosion agents. Failing to note that a sustainable situation occurs only when man’s ability to use natural resources can be replenished naturally. Man’s activity has outstretched the ability of these resources to replenish naturally. The interactions of man’s current processes with the environment have strained it. Human disturbance affects the interdependence of the atmosphere, that is, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere which leads to environmental degradation. It has caused negative impact in several ways such as global warming, acidification, fossil and resource depletion, photo chemical oxidation, human toxicology, and fresh water aquatic pollution.

In general terms, both the worst forms of environmental degradation, and the worst social impacts of such damage, occur when the individuals or groups benefiting from the overexploitation of natural resources or overuse of environmental sinks are not the ones who suffer the adverse effects of environmental decline. It is perhaps obvious that, if those who damage the environment were forced to bear the full costs of their activities, a great many types of environmental exploitation would cease to be profitable, and environmental degradation would slow considerably. The lack of support given to the urban poor in this area has serious consequences on their health and on the urban environment. Thus, in cities of the developing world, the management of solid wastes is now an issue of vital importance to urban sustainability.