Making sanitation and waste treatment affordable

Safisana wants to fundamentally improve the health and wellbeing of people living in appalling circumstances in non-sewered urban areas. The current absence of proper sanitation and waste treatment services in many low and middle income countries still causes over 842,000 deaths each year. The huge health challenges plus the growing global climate, energy and food crises fuels our desire to act.

Turning waste into value

By re-using waste as a resource to produce biogas and organic fertilizer, it is our burning ambition to create social, economic and environmental impact. Safisana has developed a circular and financially-affordable business model for governments, utilities and food processing industries, that combines faecal sludge and organic waste treatment with the production of renewable energy, nutrients and water.

Local Solutions, Global Impact

Our mission is to become the standardised waste to resource solution in low and middle income countries. By building and operating a large number of locally embedded recycling plants, we create long term impacts on public and personal health, carbon emission and climate mitigation, availabitily of sustainable energy and food.

One recycling plant in Ghana serves
over 147,000 beneficiaries

4,300

tonnes of organic waste
treated per year

10,900

tonnes of faecal waste
treated per year

685

MwH renewable energy
produced per year

864,000

Kg of organic fertilizer
produced per year

This is how our circular model works

Input We collect faecal sludge from the public toilets in the community and organic waste from food markets, abbatoirs and the local food processing industries at the Safisana recycling plant.

Output Through a natural process of anaerobic digestion and fermentation, organic and faecal sludge is transformed into biogas. This renewable energy is subsequently used to produce power to feed the national electricity grid. The residue from the digester is further used and composted into a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer. Wastewater is further treated in water ponds and used as irrigation water by local farmers. Through the reuse and recovery of resources, we strengthen the local production chain.

Input We collect faecal sludge from the public toilets in the community and organic waste from food markets, abbatoirs and the food processing industries at the Safisana recycling plant.

Output Through a natural process of anaerobic digestion and fermentation, organic and faecal sludge is transformed into biogas. This renewable energy is subsequently used to produce power to feed the national electricity grid. The residue from the digester is further used and composted into a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer. Wastewater is further treated in water ponds and used as irrigation water by local farmers. Through the reuse and recovery of resources, we strengthen the local production chain.

Social, economic and environmental impacts

Benefits for Governments & Utilities

Our recycling plant is a cost-efficient, fully serviced all-in-one solution for sustainable treatment of wastewater, solid waste, and faecal sludge management. Our holistic model provides end-to-end services, ranging from lease contracts and concessions to operate as a full utility service, to tailored contracts on the basis of DBFOT.

'In many low and middle income countries poor waste management puts a huge pressure on the natural environment, public health, and related governmental budgets. Global urbanisation will only intensify this problem over the next decade, unless we support governments, utilities and IFI’s to address this problem.'

Aart van den Beukel
Managing Director and Founder of Safisana

'In many low and middle income countries poor waste management puts a huge pressure on the natural environment, public health, and related governmental budgets. Global urbanisation will only intensify this problem over the next decade, unless we support governments, utilities and IFI’s to address this problem.'

Aart van den Beukel
Managing Director and Founder of Safisana
Chair Board Safisana Holding

Safisana to the Future

Over the years Safisana has become an innovative leading player across the circular economy and global waste management community. In 2017 Safisana opened its first recycling plant in Ashaiman, located in the Greater Accra Area - the first waste-to-energy plant in West Africa. Today the Ashaiman plant has grown into a stable locally managed company. With our circular business model now being ready for replication, we are determined to roll out a network of locally embedded Safisana recycling plants across the African continent. We are currently exploring opportunities to work on co-location with existing waste water utilities and developing systems with food processing industries. With a number of serious business opportunities in Ghana and beyond, our mission for the next decade is to fast-track our scaling ambitions and our impact Like a stone that produces an expanding ripple in the water, our goal is to generate a growing impact on millions of people living in non-sewered urban areas around the world.