Creating waste is not necessarily a bad thing.
It’s wrong, if we do nothing about it.

/Mark Stevenson/

Communal waste handling is one of the greatest challenges in the cities of the Subsaharan region. In Benin, only about 7% of communal waste ends up in waste management facilities, while most of the non-degradable waste remains on the streets. Slum city areas have even been built on waste, like the coastal parts of Benin’s largest city, Cotonou. IMRO Foundation is looking into projects to significantly improve the quality of life of cities in Benin by implementing and promoting pilot solutions that could lead to significant progress and change of attitude in the management of communal waste.

Our project focuses on supporting our partner municipality, Bohicon (South Benin), to turn plastic waste into social housing and/or plastic pavement by collecting, shredding and compressing PET bottles, creating pellet bricks and than build affordable houses or pavement for low-income families and communities in need. For this aim, we are determined to install a shredder equipment in Bohicon so that the local waste management company can start to adequately treat at least a smaller portion of the daily 20 tons of communal plastic waste produced by. We believe that this initiative, as a good example, can help our partners to establish a more suitable urban lifestyle and a more resilient atmosphere in Bohicon.