How Chad is turning litter into building blocks

Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic-Food (RUTF) like Plumpy Nut is a life-saving food used to treat children with malnutrition. However, the packaging - made from a variety of materials including aluminium and plastic - is often discarded around the countryside in Chad, becoming litter due to a lack of waste disposal facilities. 

Concern worked with a local company, Karö Enterprise, to collect over 59kg of packaging - that's around 12,800 empty packages. These were recycled into 600 bricks and paving stones for use in construction.

 “We wanted to do something to reduce the litter and pollution that was being caused by the red and white RUTF food packaging that ended up across the land and environment. Working with the local community and the people we support, we came up with a way to encourage them to return the packaging,” said Clémence Eberschweiler, Country Director with Concern in Chad. 

“While it was a pilot project, the positive outcomes and reduction in litter show that small changes can make a huge difference, and we look forward to using these bricks in our own infrastructure projects in the future.”

The pilot was implemented in three districts around Lake Chad where Concern, and its partner International Rescue Committee (IRC), are working to reduce and treat acute malnutrition with humanitarian funding from the European Union.

Acute malnutrition is typically caused by not having enough to eat and is most common in children. It weakens the immune system, leaving children at high risk of dying from common childhood illnesses as well as from malnutrition itself.

Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking as the third hungriest country in the world on the 2024 Global Hunger Index. Concern is responding to malnutrition in the area around Lake Chad through the HAYAT programme. In 2023, at the start of the programme, 15.7% of the people around Lake Chad were acutely malnourished. A year later that number had reduced to 10%.

So far, the HAYAT programme has directly reached 60,000 people. This has been achieved by supporting over 27 health facilities, enabling the treatment of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and engaging with communities in preventative activities, such as mother-led malnutrition screenings, awareness sessions on how best to feed infants and young children, and support groups.

The programme also includes environmental protection measures, which the recycling project addressed. 

Families receiving the RUTF food were encouraged to return the empty packaging to the health centres and mobile clinics. It was then cleaned and sorted, before being sent to Karö Enterprise to be melted and turned into paving stones or bricks.

Karö Enterprise is a social enterprise founded in the Chad capital, N’Djamena, in 2020. Along with recycling RUTF packaging into eco-friendly construction bricks, it also specialises in waste management and recycling. It is a key actor in Chad’s circular economy movement, providing training and coaching on sustainable waste practices. Concern supported Karö with marketing, improving processing and protection equipment and the development of its staff.

Concern is committed to scaling up this recycling pilot and introducing it to other programmes we are running elsewhere in the country.