In Ghana, a total of 276,515, constituting over a quarter of a million households in occupied dwelling units dispose of their solid waste by indiscriminate dumping, the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) has indicated.
An additional quarter of a million households, that is, 259,533 buried their solid waste in the ground, whilst 1.9 million households burned their waste.
This is contained in a statement issued by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to provide insight on waste management, as the world marked International Day of Zero Waste.
The Day is commemorated annually on March 30 to promote the improvement of waste management and sustainable production and consumption.
The practice of indiscriminately dumping solid waste is highest in the Savannah (14.4 per cent) and Upper West (13.7 per cent) regions.
About half (49.0 per cent) of households in the Upper East Region disposed of their solid waste by burning, the highest recorded followed by the North East Region (38.8 per cent).
The two regions
– Upper East and North East, also have the highest percentage of households that buried their waste in the ground, that is, 11.1 and 7.6 per cent respectively.
In all, 2.4 million households representing three in every 10 (29.1 per cent) households did not have their waste collected.
Waste collection refers to disposal via compaction trucks, other vehicles, tricycles, central containers, push carts, walk-in attendants, bicycles, wheelbarrows, public dumps, or open spaces.
More than half of the households in the Upper East (65.3 per cent) and North East (53.6 per cent) regions do not have their solid waste collected, the highest percentages recorded.
Some 930,419, constituting almost a million households, do not have a receptacle to store their solid waste. This represents about one in every 10 (11.2 per cent) households nationally.
More than a quarter of households in the Upper East (27.2 per cent) and Upper West (26.6 per cent) regions do not have a receptacle to store their solid waste.
In all, six re
gions have one-fifth or more of their households without a waste receptacle.
Disaggregated data on the storage and disposal of waste from the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) can be accessed from the GSS StatsBank (https://statsbank.statsghana.gov.gh/).
The 2021 PHC General Report Volume 3M: Water Page 2 of 2 and Sanitation which provides information on wastewater disposal and solid waste management at the household level is available to download from
Source: Ghana News Agency