Overview of Green Gro Ltd. and the company's waste reuse for composting business in Ghana. Presented at a waste reuse business stakeholder workshop in Accra, led by IWMI.

1. Business Process for Waste
Re-Use For Composting
The Case of Green-Gro Limited

2. 1- Waste
a) Domestic
 Kitchen - separated
 Meat and fish
 Fruit and vegetable
 Grey water – clothes and utensils washing
 Bathroom – grey water – personal washing
 Toilet – urine and faeces
 General – paper, garden green waste, glass, tins, plastic …

3. b) Agriculture
 Weeding
 Post-harvest
Rice, cocoa bean, coco pea, other bean and peanut husks, etc.
Plant residue left standing maize, rice, all bean stalks
 Animals
Cow, pig and goat dung and droppings
Chicken coop litters, droppings including sawdust, etc.

4. 2- Re-use Option, Green-Gro Ltd choice
 Waste easier to collect
 Transportation
 Location – predominant waste
 Best combination for highest NPK and minerals for soil aeration.

5. 3- Composting, Working practical experience
 Rodale Institute, Pennsylvania USA (Funded USAID, TIP Programme)
 Travelling through many towns in many US states studying the different
systems for Urban Waste Management (Funded USAID)
 Yorkshire Water Company, UK, turning de-watered sewage sludge into
compost (self funded)
 London Borough Recycling Association (LARAC) UK, waste separation,
management, composting, biogas (self funded)
 Visiting towns in Denmark, urban waste management, windrow
composting outdoors, indoors with spent mushroom litter (funded
DANIDA)
 Ontario, Canada, garden and foresting green waste (self funded)`

6. 4- Physical requirements
 Minimum land for commercial product, 5 acres
 Access to clean water, piped, river, lake, well.
 Electricity or generator for pumping water
 Compacted hard standing, support – large, heavy trucks, ideal being
concrete.

7. 5- Green-Gro Limited adaptation of - book
learning - education to gain the experience to
work with local conditions
a) Production materials
 Accra – sawdust – (soft woods) - brewery wash and liquor
 Tema – Cocoa bean husk, cow dung
 Dawhenya – rice husk – cow dung – good droppings – chicken coop litters
 Takoradi – sawdust (soft woods) – cocoa bean husks – caw dung, chicken
coop litter
 Kade – palm nut husks – sawdust (soft woods) – chicken coop litter – pig
dung
 Kumasi – sawdust (soft woods) – chicken coop litter – brewery mash and
liquor – pig dung.
 Tamale – rice husks – groundnut husks – cow dung.

8. b) Method
 Proportional mix of materials
 Heating – test with hand or 1 meter long lance thermometer
 Water and turn to cool and moisten every 3-4 weeks depending on the
weather, and until heap stops heating up.

9. c) Sales
 Commercial farmers, vegetable growers, fruit growers, flower growers
 Landscape designers and contractors
 Home vegetable and flowers for gardens and pots
 To NGOs to supply to farmers as inputs.
 Fish farming and snail rearing.
 Long relationship with our buyers since 1998

10. 6- Food security
a) Chemical fertilizer alone cannot solve the problem of soil fertility.
Organic material is essential to be added to all soils.
It is the combination of chemical and organic matter that is
necessary to give good quality and yield to ensure food security.

11. b) Way forward
 Education is necessary to explain the need of organic matter in the soil for
soil fertility
 More commercial natural (organic) compost makers
 Compost makers to work with Agriculture Extension Officers to equal the
opportunity with the chemical fertilizer.
 Lobby the government and Minister of Agriculture for budget to compost
sewage sludge which will give a large quantity of organic matter for
composting
 Government gives farmers subsidised chemical fertilizers. If 20% of this was
given to organic matter or compost makers, it would encourage and educate
farmers to use both organic and chemical hand-in-hand to see the benefit in
crops quality and yield.

12. THANKS!! LETS CHAT …