AMCON, Inc. (City of Yokohama, Kohoku Ward)

1 Business

Delivery of sludge dehydrators to public sewage treatment plants and private plants

2 Country, region (city, etc.)

Republic of the Philippines (Cebu metropolitan area, Baguio city, etc.)

3 Contribution to SDGs

4 Project Results

(1)Urban issues

Cebu city in the Republic of the Philippines does not have sewerage system. Sludge from the restrooms of households and offices is instead stored in septic tanks. These storage tanks are made of concrete and are used to temporarily store wastewater from restrooms. In some cases, the sludge is not fully removed from the tanks and flows into rivers together with rainwater. In other cases, septic tanks are not installed at all and wastewater drains directly into rivers. Once every several years, sludge is removed by cesspit cleaner trucks. However, even when the sludge is removed by these trucks, the sludge from the septic tanks (septage) is not properly processed and is directly dumped at waste disposal sites. These activities result in the pollution of rivers and underground water reservoirs and this is becoming a major urban issue due to the adverse health effects.

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(2)Urban solutions of AMCON

In order to provide sludge dehydrator technologies, from fiscal year 2012, AMCON, Inc. (hereinafter called AMCON) conducted JICA’s SDGs Business Supporting Surveys.

Through JICA’s surveys, it was confirmed that AMCON’s dehydrator is very effective in processing the sludge that is removed by cesspit cleaner trucks from septic tanks, because the dehydrator can efficiently separate solid content and moisture content in the sludge and is not easily clogged.

As a result of JICA’s surveys in Cebu city, the company’s technologies were highly praised by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) of the Republic of the Philippines. Consequently, the company delivered the sludge dehydrators for the first time to a public sewage treatment plant in the Philippines. The delivery was made to two public facilities: the sewage treatment plant in Baguio city and the sludge treatment facility in Tarlac city. This was a major step forward in the development of the overseas business of the company. At the sewage treatment plant in Baguio city, the following effects were reported: (1) a drastic shortening of the sludge processing time (as compared to sun drying, as it used to take about 2 months to sun dry sludge to sell it as compost); (2) an improvement in the sanitary environment within the plant (after the sludge is delivered to the plant, the odor and the generation of flies was drastically reduced by the presence of the dehydrator).

Additionally, the surveys in Cebu city resulted in the expansion of the introduction of the product to private facilities. The product is being introduced to a wide range of private plants including a food plant, and the premises of chemical companies, electronic product manufacturers, and automobile manufacturers. It is now being used in more than 20 facilities. The product is capturing the attention of other companies with high septage emissions such as hotel operators, and further expansion of the introduction of the product is expected.

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