Abstract
In urban Blantyre, there is ample green-waste and widespread interest in compost, but the feedstock is often contaminated with plastics. If composting is going to become more widely implemented, it must be profitable and ideally, competitive with chemical nutrients, however the time and cost associated with plastics removal is currently a bottleneck to profitability. In this study we investigated the financial sustainability of compost production using a Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing method over 16-weeks to identify the types and duration of each activity required. Combining these data with capital and operating costs, we then modeled the profitability of the facility to identify cost-bottlenecks and to determine scenarios that would lead to improved profitability. The results show that it took 1 h 50 min of labor to produce 165-L (0.065 m3) bag of compost. A total of 12.3% of the active labor time was spent sorting out plastics from the organic waste before composting, during composting and from the finished product before packaging. Until similar work is published on the topic, these values cannot be evaluated as being either optimal or wasteful, but rather, serve as a baseline against which future interventions—e.g., source separation, especially at markets can be evaluated. Though based in Malawi, the documented and modeled costs can be converted and scaled by other entrepreneurs/agencies who are interested in estimating the financial feasibility of composting in their own context.
Highlights
Malawi, like many other developing nations in the Global South, is dependent on expensive, imported chemical fertilizers to support its subsistence agricultural sector [For instance, in 2019 alone, Malawi imported US $214.88 million worth of chemical fertilizers
By working with the Blantyre City Council (BCC), and paying MWK 1,500 per 7 m3 skip full of mixed waste, BCC’s transportation costs to Mzedi dumpsite are reduced, landfill airspace at Mzedi is conserved, and greenhouse gas (GHG) production is mitigated (MWK 1,000 is ∼1 British Pound (£); for ease of conversion, remove the last three digits of the value in Kwacha)
16-Week Study Results from the TDABC study showed that the production of compost is a labor-and time-intensive process, and that the necessity of removing plastic from the organic waste (OW) contributes measurably to both metrics
Summary
Like many other developing nations in the Global South, is dependent on expensive, imported chemical fertilizers to support its subsistence agricultural sector [For instance, in 2019 alone, Malawi imported US $214.88 million worth of chemical fertilizers. Some years, such as 2013, saw imports reach as high as US $350 million (United Nations, 2021). Since the 2005 maize growing season, the government, through the (Ministry of Agriculture, and Food Security of Malawi, n.d.) (AIWD), has implemented a Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), which provides fertilizer to qualified farmers each season. Prior to the presidential election on 21st May 2020, Saulos Chilima, the vice president of Malawi, and a member of the incumbent challenging “Tonse” alliance, promised cheap chemical fertilizer once the alliance
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