Liquid waste turned into organic charcoal in Ghana

Slumson Ghana Limited, the company contracted by government to process human liquid waste into compost for farming is also manufacturing organic charcoal as a by-product.

The company's original mandate was to dehydrate liquid waste and use the residue to produce organic compost, and they have been doing so since June 2012.

The company currently treats 60 trucks of liquid waste a day and hopes to produce at least 250 tons of organic compost every week and distribute to farmers across the country; and there is a huge demand for the product both here and abroad.

But the Managing Director of Slumson, Samson Sayibu told journalists they experimented with organic fuel production by heating some of the "toilet" at 400 degrees Celsius to kill all bacteria and pathogens and it worked.

"The final product is an organic charcoal that looks, burns, and cooks just like regular charcoal," he said.

An excited Samson Sayibu said "we made a barbecue with it and it worked perfectly. It is totally safe, does not have any bad odor and it cooks just like normal charcoal."

He noted that organic charcoal is environmentally friendly because it prevents indiscriminate tree cutting and also makes use of human waste, which is otherwise harmful to the environment and human health.

"This means our human waste will now work for the country instead of working against it and in that regard population growth could actually mean a good thing because the the bigger the population the more liquid waste so we can produce more organic charcoal," he said.

Sayibu said the company is not yet producing for commercial purposes but he believes as more human waste is processed by the company they will soon start producing for sale.

Lavender Hill
In that regard, he said the company has been awarded a $2.8million contract by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) under a DANIDA funding, to turn the famous Accra lavender hill from a human waste dumping site into a world class processing plant.

Lavender Hill is the nickname of the location at Korle Gorno in Accra, where latrine trucks go to dispose off human excreta into the sea.

Manager of the site, Nii Komey told journalists more than 100 trucks dispose of human excreta at the site daily and they charged between GHC200 and GHC150 per truck.

The activity at lavender hill has turned the color of the sea water there into brown and it poses an environmental and health risk to both human and aquatic life.

But Sayibu said he is confident that in a matter weeks, DANIDA will tie all the loose ends on funding for the project to take off to prevent further damage to the environment.

He said the site will be decontaminated before the plant is put up within a period of three months over which period the trucks which go and dispose of liquid waste there will be stopped from doing so.

Meanwhile, the truck operators who dump excreta are opposed to the project saying it might force them to look for alternatives in-land to dump the excreta.

They argue that the sea is the only location that can kill the bad odor but everywhere else liquid waste will be dumped, it will create a more serious offensive smell and pose a greater health risk.