Waste for Value Project Phase 1 (W4VP-1)

Waste for Value Project Phase 1 (W4VP-1) came up when the leader (Miss. Wokocha Diana) realised the manner in which the environment is being degraded rapidly with solid waste, and his high concern about it hazardous impact on the health of the people and the climate. Community drainages are also choked with refuse and gets flooded at the lightest downpour. Population is also growing at a very fast rate and there is a correspondent generation of huge tons of waste daily. Due to high unemployment rate, people are living under poor conditions. W4VP-1 however, seeks to help solve these problems by creating employment through a circular economy module; i.e buying of solid waste (plastics, scrap metals and car tires), and biodegradables from individual collectors, segregate them and sell to existing waste management companies to recycle and/ or process into new materials. We plan to expand to attain the capacity to process waste plastics and car tires into residual fuel oil (RFO) in the future. BUSINESS PROCESS Features & Functionalities The business readdresses the problem on grounds to be all engaging, i.e to create a system where the people in the communities will set themselves up to mitigate the strand of poverty while protecting the environment. Through this system, we will be able to buy any form of solid waste and segregate them out to be sold. Most waste management companies have targeted some specific waste materials (particular types of waste materials) which they collect/ buy leaving a lot of waste remaining in the ecosystem which still cause nuisance, i.e problem not wholly solved. We at W4VP-1 aims at creating value from all forms of waste materials except liquid and gas. In the future we will also process waste plastics and scrapped vehicle tires into RFO; a low grade petroleum product used as a fuel oil in industrial burners and boilers and also added to bitumen for various bitumen products. W4VP-1 will set up zones in communities to enhance waste collection. Zones will be marked on schedule so that waste pickers and individual homes will not miss the time for collection. In the future more value will be added to our RFO i.e the RFO will be more refined. Pricing Waste plastics, scrapped metals and biodegradables will sell at $ 0.3 (GhC 1.74), $ 0.45 (GhC 2.60) and $ 0.26 (GhC 1.50) per kilogram respectively. Factors such as the distance, and segregation may affect the selling prices. PLANS Business Forecasting and Planning W4VP-1 is now at a post – pilot stage; some few households have been used to mimic the proposed module to confirm the feasibility of the business. In an interaction with some people, we found out that people are interested in segregating/ sorting their waste, but concerns raised were that, waste collection companies collect them and add all up in one truck even when they separate their waste in different bins, and so they don’t see the need to sort/ separate/ segregate. W4VP-1 bet to differ; we will encourage the communities to separate for us by given our subscribers substantial discounts on subscription fees. We will then sell the sorted waste materials; plastics, metals and organic waste to plastic recyclers, metal processing and the composting/ fertilizer companies respectively. What are the next steps for your business? Upon commencing operations in our immediate community, we are promised with our flagship system of “creating wealth from any form and kind of waste material”, to extend to farther communities and make a remarkable impact in the waste collection business by the 3rd quarter. We will be able to break even in about one and a half year to the 2nd year. This is because our module has a very low cost of operation. Due to the government’s effort to make our cities clean, waste recycling and processing have become a very promising venture and hence there is an accommodating market to thrive in. In two years, we hope to make over $ 5,000 (GhC 28,900; $1: GhC 5.79) and a targeted profit of about 10% on the initial investment. We will also expand our operations and plan to partner other firms to obtain the financial muscles to start the 2nd phase of the project to convert waste plastics and scrap vehicle tyres into residual fuel oil.