Waste in Sunyani and Donations – July 30

Mollie called the Minister of Environmental Health this morning to set up a tour of the final disposal site for solid and liquid waste for Sunyani.  The goal of the tour was to assess whether the site could be the topic of a senior design project.  Mollie and Helena met with Daniel, the second in command for Environmental Health in Sunyani.  He talked to us at the district assembly first and then arranged for a truck to take us to the site. 

The solid waste is currently dumped on site by a contracting company paid for by the central government in Accra, providing a free garbage pickup service for individuals and businesses.  The liquid waste is currently being discharged into a lagoon system for free by private companies that are paid by individuals and businesses.  Daniel indicated that they are very interested in obtaining a truck scale so they can start charging the private companies for use of their lagoon.  He also mentioned the need for increased use of land cover over garbage dumped on the site daily.  Right now the garbage is only covered once a month. 

Mollie and Daniel discussing liquid waste disposal

Despite these challenges, Daniel was justifiably proud of Sunyani for having such an advanced waste processing system for the area.  He was especially proud of Sunyani being named the Cleanest City in Ghana 4 years in a row!  He was very excited about the idea of having Michigan Tech students design an improved system for the city and we plan to be in contact about the details of the project. 

That evening we had a lot of things to sort out in our rooms, including preparing gifts to give to all the people that have helped us out so far here in Ghana.  We also decided where to give our remaining educational supplies that we had in our luggage, and our biggest task was allocating the supplies in the shipment that we sent in May.  The update on the shipment is that it has arrived in Tema, the biggest port of Ghana, but it is still going through a clearing process, so we will not be able to distribute it’s contents ourselves.  Fortunately, we had already marked many of the books and supplies with which location they were intended for, but some items were still unmarked, so we worked on writing up clear instructions for the MCE of Sunyani as well as Emmanuel so they can distribute the supplies in the next few weeks when they are available.