Features
Innovative business strategies to tackle Ghana’s growing plastic menace
Plastic waste
This time of the year has always been a nightmare for Mavis Adjare.
Seasonal floods have been disruptive for the 45-year-old who makes her living collecting plastic waste and selling it to recyclers.
This year that has changed. Mavis picks 100 kilogramme bags of plastic waste easily at the confluence of the Kpeshieriver and the Atlantic Ocean.
Until mid-2022, the mother of three says, the onset of rain or hot weather threatened her livelihood and the future of her children. Mavis used to comb lorry stations and Accra suburbs -Tseaddo and Teshie – for plastic waste. Now she picks the plastics with ease.
“All I see is plastic waste of different shades, colours and sizes, swimming through the Kpeshie Lagoon into the sea,” Mavis says with joy.
The task of clearing the vast amounts of plastics and other waste that wash onto beaches here has been a major concern for operators of some of Accra’s most popular leisure facilities – theLabadi Beach Hotel and the Labomah Beach – located along the shore.
The waste, 80 per cent of it plastic, is often collected and set ablaze at the shore- a major worry for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which says the practice is a growing source of air pollution in Ghana’s capital. The Kpeshie Lagoon is just one of the many lagoons along Ghana’s 550-kilometer coast through which tonnes of waste plastic leaks into the sea.
Nine per cent of the nearly one million metric tonnes of plastic waste generated in Ghana annually leaks into the ocean, according to the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI). It leaks because so much of Ghana’s plastic waste – nearly 90 per cent – is not properly disposed, clogging up stormwater drains, rivers, and streams and ending up in the oceans, according to a 2020 report by the World Bank.
Many collectors, including Mavis, have joined associations that coordinate their activities to turn ‘waste’ to cash to enhance their livelihoods.
But plastics in the oceans and rivers are impossible for collectors to reach, meaning they miss out on income. They also miss out on income when plastics are burned.
Elvis Oppong, president of the Plastic Waste Collectors Association, says only 20 per cent of plastic bottles and 70 per cent of water sachets are retrieved by the Association.
“Due to lack of space, the majority of the bottle plastics waste are burnt while others go into the marine bodies,” Oppong says.
Plastic waste is now a major global problem. A recent analysis by charity Tearfund found that plastic waste is spiraling out of control across Africa.
It predicts that Africans will discard 116 million tonnes of waste annually by 2060 – a six fold increase from 2019. This is driven by demand for plastic within sub-Saharan Africa.
Plastic waste destroys drainage systems and adds to air pollution but it also threatens food supplies. It has killed so much fish and sea life that many fisheries are on the brink of collapse.
The United Nation Environmental Programme estimates that Ghana’s contribution to global marine debris is as much as 260,000 metric tonnes every year, or one to three per cent of the global total.
UNESCO’s International Oceanography Commission pegs plastic and micro plastics in the ocean at about 50-75 trillion pieces.
The yearly economic costs of plastic in the ocean are estimated to be between $US6-19 billion globally.
A new pilot project launched here in Kpeshie seeks to help solve the problem. River recycle, a Finland-based organisation, is working to remove plastic waste from the world’s waterways while enabling the most affected communities to prosper in a circular economy.
In January 2022, the company and its partners – Beach Clean Up Ghana Limited and Ambitious Africa – began collecting plastic waste from the Kpeshie Lagoon.
The organisation created a ‘trash boom’ — a floating barge stretched across a river – to capture plastic waste as the currents take it downstream. The boom consists of floats made from standard plastic piping, attached to wire mesh barriers that resemble fencing.
The mesh barrier extends into the water to capture pieces of plastic floating below the surface. It is anchored by ropes to the bank of the river.
Mr John Adelegan, who leads the implementation, explains that every river is unique. The team must first gather information to specifically design the plastic recovery system for this river. There have been setbacks – the system was damaged by large floating logs and stumps – but the team redesigned it and has seen improved results.
The changes include the use of steel piles and concrete blocks to make the system more resistant to erosion, high-density polythylene pipe instead of polyvinyl chloride and a second floater to ensure float even if one floater is damaged,” Mr Adelegan explains.
For the first three months, the system collected 30 tonnes of low value (single use) plastics and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The low value plastics are recycled into boards, which are used to produce furniture, a substitute for wood while the PET is shredded into flakes for export.
With a broad smile, MrAdelegan says already two leading beverage companies have placed orders to buy plastic boards for that.
Finding alternatives for discarded plastic is becoming crucial in countries like Ghana. A visit to communities like Kpong land fill site, Agbobloshie, Mamprobi, Kanashie, Dansoman, Adentan and Jamestown that are becoming overwhelmed with plastic waste makes it obvious how much of a burden it is becoming.
Experts in waste management and environment protection applaud recycling efforts such as the one in Kpeshie. Mr Henrique Pacini, Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, says embracing the concept of “circularity” – where resources, particularly plastics, are reused and recycled repeatedly – will help fast track development in lower income countries like Ghana.
According to Dr Henry K. Kokofu, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, the revised policy will focus on prevention and other innovative strategies, including issuing producers who package products in plastic with unique codes, which they will be required to retrieve or face sanctions.
DrKokufo rules out a total ban of single used plastics saying it will be too big a burden on Ghanaian companies and the economy.
The massive work of cleaning plastics from the ocean is not on the agenda for now but at least for people like Mavis and those living around the Kpeshie Lagoon River recyle’s efforts offer relief from the seasonal onslaught of plastic waste and a hope for a cleaner environment for her children. –GNA
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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