Study and design of a landfill of low social and environmental impact in Togo, Village of Assahoun

RESEARCH PROJECT

Thanks to a collaboration between the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering of the University of Bologna and the Soutien Planète Association, the project of a controlled landfill was created for the village of Assahoun, in Togo. Tha landfill has a low environmental impact and is linked to a waste management system.

The waste collection service in Togo exists today only in large cities and is provided for a fee, thus excluding all families who can not afford it. The consequence is that most of the populations of the cities and the inhabitants of all the villages of the country dump their waste in illegal landfills, on the sides of roads and in fields or, still worse, burn them.

In this way, diseases, respiratory and carcinogenic, multiply, and pneumonia is today the major cause of child death. Insects and rodents proliferate carrying severe epidemics, including malaria, plague and cholera. Without forgetting that the uncontrolled waste discharge also leads to the pollution of groundwater and therefore the risk of contamination of the entire food chain. Hence the idea of a controlled landfill, to be built to ensure a low environmental impact, planning the good management of biogas production and leachate.

The project was carried out taking into account the climatic conditions and the composition of the waste, the location and size of the landfill and the waterproofing and roofing systems. The hope, now, is that the Assahoun landfill does not remain just a project on paper, but that on the contrary it can be built in a near future.

 

Collaborations:

Soutien Planète Association: voluntary association and international solidarity that operates in Togo, Africa