We have been talking about recycling and waste management recently. So I decided to visit an engineered Landfill site to see how it operates.

A Landfill is an engineered or designed area where waste material is being buried under the soil as a means of safe and sanitary disposal.

There are few landfills in Ghana and the visited landfill site is one of the largest. The landfill has a size of about 1000 acres and serves as the only landfill for the  Kumasi Metropolis made up of 9 sub metros and 1 municipal produces approximately about 1500metricton (mt) of waste daily.

Waste at the landfill were both solid and liquid, however, the site does not landfill pathological waste and they also do not receive any form of chemical waste (pharmaceuticals, agro shops, etc).

Oti landfill, as it is called, receives about 1200 to 1300 metric tons of waste every day. Waste from various industries are differentiated, thus, some companies produces zero waste whiles others are also on the path to zero waste. Zero waste is whereby a company utilize all their waste except liquid waste- either by selling or by cascading. Example of such company in Kumasi is Guinness Ghana.

There are a number of companies which operates at the landfill site. I will share with you soon the design of the landfill and how the landfill operates in Ghana.