News:
Makafui Awuku
February 4, 2022
Mickingtorch Africa has commission the first plastic waste bus shelter at Ayawaso West Wuogon in the Greater Accra Region.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organisation, Makafui Awuku noted that this is the first one and would be replicated in the other regions.
According to him, he is bent on pushing the recycling agenda and keeping the plastic waste out of the environment, and is already engaging more Assemblies within the capital to get more space to do further installation.
Responding to how he was going to sustain the project which is capital intensive as the initial one cost around thirty thousand Ghana cedis, he noted that the project can run on its own with the installation of advertising space on it to allow companies interested to advertise and pay for us to do the installation.
“This is the first one we have built, we would introduce other features along the way, as we improve upon the design and do a few changes. We are hopping it can cost less so that we can build more”, he noted.
Commenting on whether Ghana as a nation is winning the war against plastic wastes, Mr. Awuku noted that a couple of things have been done; “policy legislations have been passed by Parliament which is very important without law backing anything we cannot achieve anything. We have development partners like government to provide the capacity support and funding for innovators like myself which is good for capacity building indicating that there is a lot of advocacy through government initiative and local government initiatives trying to change people’s behavior”.
And added that there is a lot happening if we can sustain it as a nation, we can win the war and added that Ghana is not the most polluted around the world, there is a lot happening in the country when it comes to waste management.
On her part, the Municipal Chief Executive of the Ayawaso West Assembly Sandra Owusu Ahinkorah commended Mickingtorch Africa, for their initiative pointing out that plastic waste is a resource used in the daily activities of every Ghanaian.
But most of the time it is disposed alongside with other waste materials but studies have shown that it takes a long time for plastics to decompose as long as five hundred years, hence failure to manage it well can lead to plastic pollution resulting in unclean and unsafe environment, hence recycling is very important.
He further thanked Geodrill Ghana Limited for their financial support to Mickingtorch and Academic City University for assisting with their research.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com