In the past year DeCo! piloted the first household separation program in Northern Ghana. Fifteen communities with each ten families, covering low, middle and high income, were selected to participate in the process of waste collection and separation. Each family received two garbage bins, one for organic waste and one for non-biodegradable waste. The organic waste was onward collected every second day by CLIP to avoid bothering the families with the smell of decomposition. Later it was further processed by DeCo! for organic fertilizer.
Along with the bins DeCo! provided an intensive educational campaign covering the importance and procedure of waste separation. The aim was to create an understanding which is so far lacking as the residents of the Northern Regions are used to disposing or burning their waste altogether. Hence, educating on the issue is a necessity for the piloting program to be successful.
The project turned out to be a great accomplishment. Every week 4 tons of organic waste were generated and further processed. However, the lack of former education was causing some challenges for the DeCo! team. Firstly, it was difficult to convey information about waste separation to the whole family. Members of the household who were not present during the educating session often caused waste mixing. Secondly, some of the families used the bins not for garbage collection but as water storage instead.
Finally one can say that in order to secure the success of the piloting project further thorough education is needed.

Last week DeCo!’s production manager Ibrahim Amadu and Presby Water Project staff went into two communities, Blamposo and Jermoape in the Central Gonja District, for an awareness raising project. The main aim was to give the community members an info session on how they can make use of their waste by turning it into fertilizer. This included the discussion of the benefits of organic fertilizer in agriculture as well as a practical training on how to produce it within the community. Both groups showed a lot of interest, not only the chief and farmers were present but also their women and children. The DeCo! and Presby Water Project team answered a lot of questions concerning the process of composting, sanitation and health. At the end Blamposo and Jermoape seemed eager to immediately implement what was explained to them. When we left, we observed them gathering their organic waste, neem leaves, etc. and piling it up for composting.

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The project was officially launched on 19 December 2013. The approach foresees an initial 3-year trialphase to create awareness and build production capacity in order to finally implement a sustainable business model.
Zoomlion will support the construction and operation of two pilot composting plants in the region around Tamale for efficient input delivery and separation of bio-degradable waste. That includes piloting at-source separation with hotels, restaurants and markets and training of unemployed youth under the Waste and Sanitation Module of the National Youth Employ-ment Programme as field personnel. The partnership will run a joint advocacy and marketing campaign, including a stakeholder conference, a policy symposium and farmer forums to sensitize stakeholders on ecological, agronomical and economical advan-tages of organic fertilizer.
DeCo! is going to have its proven small-scale composting techniques tested and adapted in the pilot plants. They will also be the main conduit to the farming community and implement farmer trainings and awareness actions. Farmers will be able to supply their waste material as an input for composting against a cash fee and run demonstration plots with free supply of organic fertilizer and extension support. Some will be capacitated to act as local agents for the eventual sales of organic fertilizer. An
option to run low-tech decentralised composting sites in a fran-chise system will be investigated.
Research and marketing activities will explore sales and distribution channels and identify costumer segments such a nurseries, smallholder farmers, municipalities, horticutural producers, agrochemical- or mining companies.

The cooperation with ASS has started in 2010 and this is the fourth MoU signed between DeCo! and ASS. DeCo! produces a special organic fertilizer including biochar for ASS. The contracted quantities have increased every year and the various impacts on yields and the farming community have been carefully monitored. We are looking forward to continue and extent this successfull cooperation.

The AKTP project is a Britisch Council funded project implemented by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in conjunction with Zoomlion Ghana and DeCo!. The main idea of the project is the sustainable and cyclical use of waste to form organic fertilizers. That is the waste that is generated from households, which is collected and co-composted with biochar to form organic fertilizers which are in turn distributed to smallholder farmers to increase soil fertility.
DeCo! will be represented at the launch of the project on the 16th of January by its production manager, Ibrahim Amadu.

The work of DeCo! in Tamale was presented at the World Solid Waste Summit in September in Florence, Italy, in a session about the challenges of waste management in rapidly developing countries.

The World Solid Waste Summit, organized by the International Solid Waste Association, is the most important waste management conference in the world. This year, held on September 17-19 in Florence, it attracted more than 1000 delegates from business, academia, government and NGOs from all five continents.

The work of DeCo! was presented by Pietro, who wrote his master thesis at the TU Delft about DeCo!. He talked about the achievements of the first years of activities, future possibilities and the challenges to be overcome. We are proud to say that DeCo!\\\\\\\'s approach sparked lively interest and we got a special mention as an exemplary project in the final address by the authors of the UN-HABITAT report "Solid Waste Management in the World Cities".

www.iswa2012.org
www.iswa.org

DeCo! Sustainable Farming and the African Knowledge Transfer Partnership Programme (AKTP) lead by Prof. Moses Mensah of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Sciene and Technology (KNUST) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The AKTP Programme of the British Council has developed a programme to assist businesses to imporve their competivtiveness and productivity through knowledge, technology and skills available from higher educational institutions.
Inspired by the approach of DeCo!, AKTP-KNUST and Zoomlion will develop decentralized composting in theAyuom community. The farming village community of Ayuom in the Ashanti region has the problem of increasingly low fertility of the soil for farming. In addition, the disposal of its household wastes ahs been indiscriminate. DeCo! will assist this project with their expert knowlege and pioneer experiences in decentralized composting.

In 2011, DeCo! and ASS collaborated on the production of a biochar-compost fertilizer, which has been tested on farms around Tamale and Walewale. The cooperation and the experiment were successful and the results have been published in an extensive report.
As a result DeCo! and ASS have agreed to substantially increase its cooperation in 2012. DeCo! is going to produce 100 tons of biochar-compost fertilizer which will be distributed to farms in different region cultivating different crops. The same farmers will get organic fertilizer from DeCo! and mineral fertilizer in order to test impact. DeCo! will regularly report about the progress and together with ASS will publish the results after harvest.

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A few weeks ago, we had the fantastic opportunity to advocate DeCo! beyond Ghana\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s borders and extend our network on the African continent. Ibrahim represented DeCo! in a meeting of nearly 200 participants of the Green Economy symposium with the 30 global winners of the SEED Awards 2010 in Pretoria, South Africa.

After obtaining a last-minute visa -literally!-, Ibrahim had to rush to the airport to embark on the first flight of his life. After a good night\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s sleep in Pretoria, he set up a small showcase sample of our fertilizer for the ceremony. He even planted some fresh and green grass on it!

The Executive Director of the SEED initiative Helen Marquard gave the opening speech, and she and the UN under secretary-general and Executive Director of UNEP Achim Steiner introduced the work of UNEP, including the Green Economy Initiative. As Mr Steiner said, \\\\\\\\"The SEED winners underline how the green shoots of a Green Economy are sprouting across the developing world. (...)\\\\\\\\" And: DeCo! is part of it!

We got the opportunity to network and present our product to development partners in the afternoon. In the evening, the awards ceremony took place, and Ibrahim took the award for all of us, including the audience\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s standing ovations!

On his last day in Pretoria, Ibrahim collaborated in a workshop at the Department of Science and Technology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). A good opportunity for presenting our product and work, and networking with other SEED Award winners, especially those operating in our field.

The grass shalll grow and flourish!

On March 10, we had the great opportunity to meet with 20 experts from academia and agricultural research institutions, local NGOs, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), and farmers from the Tamale region to discuss the future of Deco! and possible partnerships and collaborations. The one-day workshop took place at the Tamale Institute for Cross-Cultural Studies (TICCS). We got loads of feedback from the different stakeholders in the discussion rounds. We will analyse and evaluate all the valuable input we obtained and incorporate it into our strategy for the next organic fertilizer production cycles to come.

After these very fruitful discussion rounds, our workshop ended with a visit to our production site in the village Kukuo Yepalsi near Tamale. Our largest visitor group so far! We are glad and grateful for the many people that showed interest in what we do - thanks for attending our workshop to all participants! Pictures can be found under our gallery section...

On March 4, the complete DeCo! team met in Accra and received the SEED Award 2010. Right after the ceremony, we participated in a strategy workshop provided by the SEED initiative.

We were coached by the consulting firm adelphi. For two full days, Yakubu, Ibrahim, Christoph, Marion, Gregor, Stephen, Katja, Marius and Leen had heated discussions and brainstorming sessions. We returned to Tamale with a whole bunch of new ideas and management tools for making DeCo! yet more successful and professional. Thanks to Cosima for the excellent coaching!

DeCo! is one of the 30 winners (out of 428 projects which applied) of the highly acknowledged Seed Award 2010. Each year UNEP and UNDP jointly look for innovative start-ups in developing countries, which aim to tackle environmental and social challenges. Please find more information on the website www.seedinit.org or have a look on the press release of UNEP: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=651&ArticleID=6814&l=en&t=long

In the rapidly growing city Tamale, problems and issues of solid waste management are of major importance. Currently, solid waste is disposed of in unsanitary landfills, leading to the pollution of soil, surface- and groundwater through leachate and to uncontrolled methane production.

DeCo! helps to improve these problems through a new collaboration with the Ghanaian waste management company Zoomlion. Starting the third week of February, DeCo composts part of the organic fraction of the the municipal waste to produce fertilizer. In a first test run, the goal is to compost 150 tonnes of municipal waste between February and April 2011.

Recylcing the waste reduces the waste burden of the city and and produces valuable fertilizer.

Farmers in the Savanna Region of Ghana (North of Ghana) face severe soil degradation due to an insufficient application of organic matter to the soil. The consequences are lower yields which cause food shortages and food insecurity.
Composting is widely seen as the best solution to increase soil quality and reduce soil degradation. However, numerous attempts to encourage farmers to compost by themselves failed since the process involves a lot of work before the first benefits are seen and knowledge to produce compost is hard to transfer to every single farmer.

DeCo! is a registered NGO, which is convinced of the benefits of compost and solves the named problems by providing a composting service to smallholder farmers. People in the villages sell the collected biomass to DeCo!. At a decentralized composting plant the biomass of 3 to 6 surrounding villages is gathered and composted. Deco! employs only local people who have no alternative work during dry season. Finally, the compost is offered to local farmers which apply it before the sowing period.

With your contribution you support the pilot phase of the project and help to:
- reduce soil degradation
- create local unskilled jobs
- improve food security
- reduce GHG emissions (from a landfill in Tamale)
- support a non-profit social business during its starting period

After the pilot phase (2010/2011) DeCo! will be self-sustaining by investing all revenues in new compost production. The overall objective is to have a closed system and a durable sustainable project which can be easily scaled up to other regions.

In February 2011 we launched our new Website. You can find a lot of information about our organisation. Have a look!