Students tackle plastic waste menace, Friday, February 25, 2011, Pg 18
Statistics from the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and waste management bodies indicate that some 270 tonnes of plastic waste is generated each day in Accra alone.
The staggering figure has brought together students from the Lincoln Community School (LCS) and the 48 Engineering School, both in Accra, to engineer means to reduce the plastic waste menace in the city.
Under the project, students from the two schools have developed an environmental awareness campaign that emphasises the inherent problems associated with plastic waste.
At a programme at Teshie in Accra last Friday, the students used dance, songs, a dramatic sketch written by them, as well as a presentation, to illustrate the danger posed by plastic waste to the environment.
The presentation painted a gloomy picture for the country’s environment if the current trend continued. It also defined the problem locally and connected it to the larger global issue.
Pictures rolled by showing animals and fish that died as a result of swallowing plastic materials, with drains choked with empty water sachets and plastic bags.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the Communities Service and Outreach Co-ordinator of the LCS, Mr Terry Donohue, said the initiative was to allow members of the school’s Global Issues Network (GIN) to partner other schools and solve existing problems in their communities.
According to him, as part of the project, students of the 48 Engineering School would replicate the project in other schools in their community, adding that people needed to team up and clean up their environment to reduce the plastic waste menace in order to secure the environment against the dangers posed by those materials.
He said the viable alternative to ridding Ghana of the plastic waste canker was for the government to consider banning plastic bags.
“It is sad that a beautiful country like Ghana is littered with plastic materials, even along the beaches,” he stated.
Mr Donohue said the project would be replicated in another school in Nima and other parts of Accra to ensure that young people led the crusade against plastic.
A member of the GIN, Biruk Terrefe, said education remained the first step towards making people conscious of the need to protect the environment and hoped that the project would go a long way towards helping to change attitudes.
Meanwhile, latest figures from the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology indicate that there are 895 plastic manufacturing companies and sachet water manufacturers in the country, producing about 26,000 metric tonnes of assorted plastic products annually, with 90 per cent of the companies in the Accra and the Tema metropolises alone.
Research shows that food in plastic containers kept in intense heat and frozen water bottles release Dioxin, a highly poisonous cancer-causing chemical.
While the Ugandan government banned plastic bags in 2007, in Ghana the sale of ice water provides considerable employment and it is argued that the economic implications of a ban on plastics will be too significant.
The staggering figure has brought together students from the Lincoln Community School (LCS) and the 48 Engineering School, both in Accra, to engineer means to reduce the plastic waste menace in the city.
Under the project, students from the two schools have developed an environmental awareness campaign that emphasises the inherent problems associated with plastic waste.
At a programme at Teshie in Accra last Friday, the students used dance, songs, a dramatic sketch written by them, as well as a presentation, to illustrate the danger posed by plastic waste to the environment.
The presentation painted a gloomy picture for the country’s environment if the current trend continued. It also defined the problem locally and connected it to the larger global issue.
Pictures rolled by showing animals and fish that died as a result of swallowing plastic materials, with drains choked with empty water sachets and plastic bags.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the Communities Service and Outreach Co-ordinator of the LCS, Mr Terry Donohue, said the initiative was to allow members of the school’s Global Issues Network (GIN) to partner other schools and solve existing problems in their communities.
According to him, as part of the project, students of the 48 Engineering School would replicate the project in other schools in their community, adding that people needed to team up and clean up their environment to reduce the plastic waste menace in order to secure the environment against the dangers posed by those materials.
He said the viable alternative to ridding Ghana of the plastic waste canker was for the government to consider banning plastic bags.
“It is sad that a beautiful country like Ghana is littered with plastic materials, even along the beaches,” he stated.
Mr Donohue said the project would be replicated in another school in Nima and other parts of Accra to ensure that young people led the crusade against plastic.
A member of the GIN, Biruk Terrefe, said education remained the first step towards making people conscious of the need to protect the environment and hoped that the project would go a long way towards helping to change attitudes.
Meanwhile, latest figures from the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology indicate that there are 895 plastic manufacturing companies and sachet water manufacturers in the country, producing about 26,000 metric tonnes of assorted plastic products annually, with 90 per cent of the companies in the Accra and the Tema metropolises alone.
Research shows that food in plastic containers kept in intense heat and frozen water bottles release Dioxin, a highly poisonous cancer-causing chemical.
While the Ugandan government banned plastic bags in 2007, in Ghana the sale of ice water provides considerable employment and it is argued that the economic implications of a ban on plastics will be too significant.
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