Story By: Joyce Gyekye
Ghana is benefiting from a global action initiative, End Plastic Pollution International Collaboration, (EPPIC) to address the plastic menace that threatens the country in the areas of public health, loss of income for fishers, climate change through air pollution and biodiversity loss.
EPPIC, which is being led by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN is funded by the US Department State Agency and implemented by a consortium including Oceans Foundation, Searious Business, and the Aspen Institute is to harmonize global and national actions on-going in addressing plastic pollution.
To kick start the project in Ghana, an inception workshop has been held involving stakeholders in the plastic value chain including Small Medium Enterprises, environmental NGOs, the Ghana Plastic Manufacturing Association and officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, MESTI.
Addressing the meeting, the Project Coordinator of IUCN Ghana, Dorcas Owusuaa Agyei acknowledged the problems associated with addressing plastic pollution, despite numerous donor funds and government interventions in the areas of policies to address the issues but to no avail.
She expressed EPPIC’s commitment to “ Transforming the narrative through effective actions and solutions to promote a circular economy for plastics through knowledge sharing, police support and science-based solutions.”
She noted that by addressing plastic pollution, the “EPPIC project will help protect biodiversity, ecosystems, natural resources and promote sustainable production and consumption patterns.”
As part of the project, the capacities of SMEs in implementing solutions to addressing Upstream and Midstream pollution of plastics will be built through a grant mechanism. In view of this, there are two calls for proposals for SMEs to apply with the first call being for 150 thousand Dollars. The first call for proposal ends on the 27th of October, 2024, with the project to be implemented within a year.
The Director, Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, (PPME) at the Ministry of Environment, Science,Technology and Innovation, Lydia Essuah took participants through the National Plastics Management Policy, NPMP which was approved by cabinet in May 2020, it’s objectives and actions taken to reduce the use of plastics, recover, recycle and re-manufacture plastics.
Some of the strategies in the NPMP like the development and implementation of a Resource Mobilization Strategy and the establishment of a Certification System and database to undertake periodic monitoring and enforcement and compliance are yet to be implemented.
Mrs Essuah mentioned lack of funding, low awareness of income-generating potential of plastics resources and inadequate infrastructure and technology as some of the challenges.
The way forward she noted is “ Development of a legal framework for plastic management, reviewing of the policy and its implementation following emerging issues and ecosystem as well as financial support for up-scaling the work of SMEs in the space, plastic collectors and aggregators.”
A former Deputy Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Ebenezer Appah-Sampong who spoke about the plastic pollution in Ghana, said only about five percent of plastics are collected and recycled with 80 percent that are mismanaged going into dump sites, burnt and into the ocean.
He said though there have been initiatives at the local, corporate, national,regional and global levels, more needs to be done by international partners in assisting policy development in Ghana as well as the provision of technical assistance to address the menace.
The challenges in plastic waste collection and management, insufficient infrastructure and investment as well as a lack of comprehensive data on plastic waste generation and disposal were also highlighted.
EPPIC, aims to reduce the environmental impact of plastics with actions in Africa in countries including Ghana, Senegal and Kenya as well as Guatemala and Honduras in Central America.
