National Orientation: Sanitation Management

Tokyo, Japan: There is no doubt that the city of Accra continues to confound its managers due to the immense volumes of garbage and refuse generated by its residents and business operations alike. In recent times, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has had to grapple with a plethora of issues that negate the effective management and disposal of waste including the oft repeated mantra of ?no money?, delayed payments, equipment breakdowns and lack of disposal sites among others. Considering the fact that many cities have had to grapple with this problem and still found innovative ways of tackling the issue, one is inclined to share the experience of Tokyo so as to give pointers to possible solutions to this hydra-headed problem.

Tokyo is densely populated by 12 million people whose activities generate approximately 40,000 tonnes of garbage. To help cope with this massive volume of refuse, the city has been divided into 23 wards which together share 20 incineration plants. Incineration has been the primary option for waste disposal mainly because of the relatively smaller size of land in Japan as a whole and Tokyo in particular. This means that the city cannot afford to use dump sites or as we are wont to do in Accra, bury refuse in earth-fill sites as a disposal method. Indeed the only option available to this industrialized and densely populated city is incineration.

Notwithstanding this reality, there has been a high level of resistance to the construction and use of incinerators by the residents of Tokyo due to real and perceived fears bordering on safety and environmental concerns which have been addressed by a concerted and carefully coordinated programme of education for the local communities. It is interesting to note that residents of the Shin-Koto district of Tokyo where the most modern and advanced incineration plant has been built at the cost of $880 million had prior to the completion of the plant waged relentless resistance before and during construction. However, this has changed dramatically to an overwhelming acceptance and support amidst calls for provision of similar facilities elsewhere. The question then arises as to why the case has been so.

The answer lies in the frank and open manner in which the education programme was conducted for the benefit of the residents and the community as a whole. To give more meaning to the exchanges, statistics and reliable data were provided, showing that averagely, each individual produces 1kg of garbage per day. The incineration plant of the locality is capable of incinerating 1800 tonnes daily based on the capacity of its 3 furnaces so that in reality, the Shin-Koto plant incinerates the refuse of 1.8 million people daily by reducing garbage to ashes within a 2 hour period.

Benefits

If the idea was simply to get rid of garbage by incineration only, the people of Tokyo would have had to contend with the reality of so much ash which would in turn cause problems of disposal and thereby negate the very reason for which incineration is a sine qua non for their progress. However, the immediate benefit of this process is the entire Japanese state which thanks to the ashes generated from the incinerators has reclaimed huge tracts of land upon which awesome skyscrapers, factories and modern socio-economic infrastructure have been built. Given that Japan is an earthquake prone country, one can only marvel at the combination of human ingenuity and collective determination to ensure safety while confronting environmental challenges.

The Shin-Koto plant itself has facilities for the recovery, reuse and energy utilization as a result of its operations. This is part of the broader determination to reduce the volume of refuse in the city, protect the environment and conserve resources for the future. On a daily basis, trucks pick up garbage from vantage points in Tokyo city and deposit them at 21 gates where the refuse is dumped into 20 meter deep receptacles for processing. This takes the form of spraying to suppress the stench and then to separate the various types of waste products. It is only then that a refuse crane capable of hauling 6 meters of garbage transports the refuse to the three incinerators which burn the trash into ashes at 8000C. The ash produced from this process is then used in land reclamation.

An additional benefit of the process is that a large volume of heat is generated which the plant cleverly harnesses for its own purposes and to generate additional cash. It is interesting to note that the plant generates 50,000Kw which can power 150,000 houses in the locality. Some of this power is used for heating and air-conditioning depending on the prevailing climatic conditions. Furthermore, the plant has been selling the excess thermal power generated at a profitable $110,000,000 to the electricity company in the locality. Clearly therefore, the plant pays for itself and is profitable enough for the recouping of the huge investment made into it.

Taking environmental concerns into consideration, the management of the facility has ensured that there is de-nitrification of the exhaust fumes produced so that pollutants are eliminated and there is no smog emanating from the giant chimney to pose hazards for the members of the locality. Thus, the not in my back yard (NIMBY) syndrome that many other countries experience has become a thing of the past in Tokyo as residents and businesses alike experience the benefits of incineration in a multifaceted way. Considering the fact that this is a local government initiative, designed managed and implemented by the municipal authorities with no intervention by the central government, our own AMA might have a few lessons to learn from the Tokyo experience with slight modifications to suit the prevailing antagonistic and worsening crisis of sanitation (mis)management in the gateway to that Gateway to Africa.