Red alert: Transportation of plastic waste for recycling accident-prone

Plastic recycling in Ghana started barely five years ago with just a little improvement recorded in the fight against the uncontrollable plastic waste menace affecting the nation.


The Accra Compost & Recycling Plant and Blowplast Recycling Industries among other companies engage in the recycling of plastics and other waste materials after the public gathers them.


The collectors are paid appreciably per kilo of plastic waste they gather intensifying the interest in recycling in the country.


The process is generally laudable except at the point of transportation where the companies pick the collected plastic waste in huge bags from vantage points in communities and send them to the recycling plants.


It is no secret that the collected plastic waste materials are dangerously overloaded on pick-up trucks which in the first place is a breach of Ghana’s road regulations while critically causing and imminent danger to motorists.

The eventual phenomenon might be the toppling of this recycle-bound plastic waste on a major road which could cause a fatal road accident, and then there will be the usual short-lived hullabaloo in the media while the act continues.


It is a fact that transporting the plastic materials in an appropriate vehicle will pose logistical and financial challenges, but if it must be done, it must be done well to avert any impending tragedy in the future.

click photos to see a vehicle spotted on the Accra-Tema Motorway overloaded with plastic waste materials for recycling. It is an example of an impending disaster if the practice is allowed to continue.