Green waste accounts for between 60 and 80% of household waste in Africa, whereas in Switzerland, it accounts for 40%. This explains why these large landfills emit a lot of methane. Methane heats the atmosphere 25 times more than CO2, therefore, it is a very important climate issue. At the same time, the African population is mainly active in agriculture. A sector that is sorely lacking in fertilizer, which is why it must too often be imported from abroad. The win-win solution would thus be to transform this green waste into compost. To do so, it is essential to focus on collecting organic waste separately from others. Without this effort, any sorting or recycling project will be doomed to failure or produce poor quality compost that contains too many plastic particles. It requires imagination and, above all, adaptation to Africa's cultural diversity. But nothing is impossible.
The other aspect is the refrigerant gases. Again, this problem can be an opportunity for job creation. To achieve this, all that is needed is to create centres for dismantling and recycling electronic waste. Such centres already exist in some countries, but the process is not always well formalised and not all dismantled elements are properly treated to avoid significant pollution. Such is especially the case with these types of gases.
The problem also lies in the large financial institutions that prefer to finance large holes to hide waste rather than building waste recovery centres that create jobs.
There has to be real economic development if we want to fight poverty in Africa. Ecology is a source of employment and waste management is one of its good examples. These large landfills are important sources of raw materials, even referred to as urban mines.
Sorting organic waste at the source will reduce the volume of large landfills by 60 to 80% and, as a result, the associated GHG emissions will also decrease. The remaining waste can either be sorted for waste recovery such as glass, aluminium, iron, paper, cardboard and even some plastics. For the other wastes, it is easy to convert them into SRF (Solid Recovered Fuel) to replace the fossil fuels used by the cement industry. It therefore has a great need for fuel to heat its kilns and is feeling a lot of international pressure to greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels (coal, heavy oil, gas). Zero waste in the landfill is not only possible, it also creates jobs and is good for the climate.
