Drinking water quality of surface and underground water within 1.34 km from a waste landfill site in Kumasi, Ghana was investigated. Physico‐chemical properties and heavy metal concentrations were analysed to determine water quality and pollution indices. It was found that turbidity of 83% of hand dug wells, 50% of the streams and 33% of boreholes were higher than World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for drinking water. Water quality index (WQI) showed that 25% of the water sources are of excellent quality, while 50%, 15% and 5% are good quality, poor quality, very poor quality and unsuitable for drinking, respectively. Heavy metal pollution index (HPI) indicated that the water sources were above the critical limit for drinking water (HPI > 100). Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed 75.30% and 70.88% of the total variance for the physico‐chemical parameters and heavy metals, respectively. The findings concluded that cadmium concentrations in all the water sources were extremely higher (0.0122–0.1090 mg/L) than WHO limit (0.003 mg/L), rendering them unwholesome for consumption.

Management of waste is a key concern in several communities in Ghana. The exponential growth in waste generation imposes serious threats such as environmental pollution, health risk and scarcity of dumping site to our society. A large variety of organic rich materials inherent in this waste have high potential to be treated by the use of anaerobic digestion. In this study, eight (8) Laboratory scale biodigesters were used for the anaerobic co-digestion of household and market waste with cow dung as inoculum, controlled at a pH range of 6.53-7.04 and at a mesophilic temperature of 35±2˚C. The study was also conducted in batch mode at a hydraulic retention time of 21 days. The anaerobic co-digestion process was developed and optimized at varying feedstock to inoculum ratio to determine the potential biogas yield from each proportion. The results obtained indicate sample S8, containing market waste and inoculum in the ratio of 6:1 produced the optimum concentration of methane (51% v/v biogas) while the least was recorded by sample S2 primarily made up of market waste. ANOVA results show that the concentration of methane produced from the substrate is significantly affected by the hydraulic retention time and pH value of the anaerobic digestion process.