Abstract
The postcolonial waste management practices in Ghana have consistently been identified with the discarding and disposal of waste in open dumps, wetlands, and landfills. These practices have only contributed to the glaring poor sanitation in the cities of Ghana. Insignificant quantity of the waste generated ends up in recycling and/or composting units for reuse. Given the current growth of Ghana’s population, coupled with the emerging industrialisation, the country’s overdependence on hydropower for energy and natural resources for production alone is dangerous. This paper provides a holistic review of the gains from solid waste. The paper reaffirms that, through appropriate technologies, waste possesses the intrinsic potential to generate renewable energy, resources, and income. In recommending, the main objective of waste management practices in Ghana should be about exploring the economic potentials of waste. Thus, waste disposal should be the last resort, and not the first option in waste management practices in Ghana.
Highlights
At a workshop at Geneva, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) defined waste as materials that are not prime products for which the generator has no further use in terms of his or her own purposes of production, transformation, or consumption and of which he or she wants to dispose
29,614,337 million, with a growth rate of 2.39% [2]. This population increase does not happen unaccompanied but come with its own issues such as rapid urbanisation linked with rampant waste generation. This stems from the changing human consumption patterns and the changing structure of the Ghanaian economy which facilitates the generation of various types of waste, especially municipal solid waste
Unlike other literatures on waste products which separately focused on waste generation, waste management, municipal solid waste combustion, and solid waste as renewable source of energy, the current study examines holistically the triple gains of waste and the way forward for Ghana
Summary
Emmanuel Mawuli Abalo ,1 Prince Peprah ,1 Julius Nyonyo, Rita Ampomah-Sarpong, and Williams Agyemang-Duah. The postcolonial waste management practices in Ghana have consistently been identified with the discarding and disposal of waste in open dumps, wetlands, and landfills. These practices have only contributed to the glaring poor sanitation in the cities of Ghana. This paper provides a holistic review of the gains from solid waste. The paper reaffirms that, through appropriate technologies, waste possesses the intrinsic potential to generate renewable energy, resources, and income. The main objective of waste management practices in Ghana should be about exploring the economic potentials of waste. Waste disposal should be the last resort, and not the first option in waste management practices in Ghana
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