The small-scale circular economy that creates decent jobs through waste management: Association Africa Ecologie

Abstract

Association Africa Ecologie was created in 2017 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso capital, to:
• Develop sustainable activities in the environmental field, particularly waste management (collection, sorting and waste recycling)
• Innovate in the field of ecology by using sector best practices
• Be an incubator for green innovations and new business models
• Sensitize populations about ecology and environment preservation
• Play an activist role
In Burkina Faso there is no public waste collecting service, people get ride of their garbage in the streets or burn them. Africa Ecologie is a pioneer by offering three bins selective sorting with collect service for households, offices, and agri-food industries. In 2019, helped by French Embassy funding, a Waste Sorting and Recycling Center was built and is now a raw materials source for different green businesses. To fight deforestation in a desertic country where population cook everyday with wood charcoal, Africa Ecologie is offering green charcoal produced from dry organic waste (biomass from green bin and starch from food industries). Derivate products are also biochar for farming and nuts shells active charcoal for cosmetics. Humid organic wastes from the brown bin are used to produce worms for fish farms and will end as compost. The blue bin needs to be sorted by operators to separate plastics, glasses, metals, batteries and non-recycle waste. Plastics have different recycles possibilities: bags become school tables / benches, hand woven by women in fashionable bags, packed in plastic bottles to create eco bricks or even pyrolyzed to create biodiesel. Glasses are grounded into grains and sand that replace natural materials in construction. Metals are traditionally repurposed by artisans or industrial foundries. Batteries and electronics are stocked for a new project that will fix or recycle.
This small-scale circular economy creates decent jobs, next step is to scale up!