Schools plastic recycling launched

Accra, May 18, GNA - A new schools plastic recycling initiative aimed at encouraging school children to dispose of their plastic properly through a school collection process was on Friday launched in Accra with the hope that the initiative would help reduce the plastic waste menace in the city. The initiative, designed by two female foreign interns from The Hague University in the Netherlands on attachment to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment (MLGRDE), is also aimed at increasing awareness on the benefits of recycling to schools.

The various classes within selected schools for the pilot are expected to compete within their schools with the best school selected at the end of the term through a daily collect, weigh and record process. The project is linked to a private recycling industry, Blowplast, which is expected to collect the waste from the schools and reward the schools financially. Waste to be collectd include all plastic wares regarded as waste, particularly water sachets and black carrier bags. Lauding the two interns, Ms Jennifer Visser and Ms Marijke Boonstra, for the initiative, Mr Stephen Asamoah Boateng, Minister, MLGRDE expressed the hope that the project would be sustained and expanded to the regions

after the initiators had returned to their countries. He said the present state of sanitation in the cities and major towns was not only in crisis but a threat to the health of the people, for which reason all citizens needed to be concerned. In spite of government's efforts to tackle the problem, and the fact that so much resource had been committed to tackle the problem, the waste has kept on engulfing the cities mainly due to the refusal of people to change their attitudes and behaviours, Mr Asamoah Boateng said.

"Our drains are choked with garbage and human excreta; our open spaces and beaches which should serve as recreational grounds have become defecating and dumping sites for all kinds of waste including plastic. "What is worse is to see people pouring out their garbage into the drain with any downpour of rain hoping it would carry it away and without caring if their action was the cause of floods or filth on our beaches," he said.

Mr Asamoah Boateng said if the sanitation laws were enforced with education, there could be a reversal in people's attitudes and behaviours. "It is for this reason that government has brought back the feared "Tankase or Sama Sama to check and bring to book people found to flout the law." He expressed the hope that the project would have the ultimate aim of creating more sustainable awareness among children and the families on proper disposal of plastic waste within the metropolis. "A lot of concern has been expressed about the way and manner plastics are disposed of in the environment and as a ministry we are determined to bring normalcy into the system," he said. Ms Visser said when they first arrived in Ghana in January for their internship with MLGRDE they were touched by the abundance of plastic waste in the environment and therefore decided to initiate a project that would help reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment. The new initiative is a collaboration between the public and private sector to deal with the problem, she said