BENIN: Waste sorting and recovery units for Greater Nokoué

The Société de gestion des déchets solides et de la salubrité du grand Nokoué (SGDS-GN) is innovating in the management of household waste in the Grand Nokoué region of Benin. The public service company plans to equip its collection points with units for the sorting and recovery of recyclable household waste. About 20 rubbish dumps will be equipped out of the fifty or so points in the greater Nokoué area. “Our objective is to have 70 household waste collection points,” says Valery Lawson, the general manager of the SGDS. The stored waste is collected by 69 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and then transported by garbage trucks out of the cities.

The first sorting and recovery unit for recyclable household waste was recently put into service at the Foun-Foun collection point in Porto-Novo. Benin’s capital alone produces 60,000 tonnes of waste per year, only 30% of which is sent to landfill. According to the SGDS, the new facility has, among other things, a warehouse for storing the recovered materials. “In our waste (more than 450,000 tonnes per year in Greater Nokoué, editor’s note), we have about 46% organic waste, 5.5% recyclable waste and 35% fine sand,” explains Valery Lawson.

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In Porto-Novo, the SGDS works in partnership with Gbobeto. The pilot waste recovery unit supports former informal household waste collectors in their formalisation and professionalization. “To date, we have collected around 81% of the waste in the Nokoué area and we want to reach 100%,” says the general manager of SGDS. To achieve its objective, the public service company also requires households to package their waste in 840 standard bins. Since June 2021, this equipment has been on sale in Benin at a price of 25,000 CFA francs, or more than 38 euros.

Inès Magoum