Sustainability and Community Affairs Manager for Voltic Ghana Ltd, Joyce Ahiadorme has said her outfit together with 7 other companies, have come together to champion the guest of encouraging proper waste management practices in the country.
The initiative tagged 'Ghana Recycling Initiatives by Private Enterprises (GRIPE)', is aimed at empowering Ghanaians to adopt the habit of proper waste management and in the process reduce the amount of plastic waste on our streets - a situation she believes will go a long way to curb the nation’s dire sanitation problem.
The companies that make-up GRIPE include, Voltic, Fanmilk, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pz Cussons, Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL) and Dile chemicals.
“One big thing we are doing this year is to partner with 7 other companies to form what we call GRIP (Ghana Recycling Initiative Private Enterprise) and this is a long journey that we have taken to manage our waste. We want to be able to find sustainable ways of managing waste,” she said.
“We want to empower and bring together people who are already in this value chain so that sustainably we can find value for the plastics and then we can get the plastics off our streets,” she added.
She mentioned that an earlier research which suggested that, plastic waste could be used together with other products as a building material may have triggered the initiative, adding that the main focus was going to be on awareness creation and education.
“We have realized that there is a research that was into using modified concrete to manage waste, and what we realized was that this research must be brought to life; so we contacted those who had done the research, EAP. What they needed was funds to be able to help them bring the research to life,” she noted.
According to her, the waste to be collected will be mixed into concrete and used for building. The Ghana Standards Authority will then have to, upon scrutiny, approve the innovation or disapprove based on its capabilities.
This she said will make people see the value in waste and subscribe to proper waste management.
“They are supposed to collect the waste, mix the plastic with sand and they will use it for concrete. That concrete will be used in building. Once this small pilot is done, we want to build a five-unit block of a place of convenience. When it is done and GSA is able to testify that this block is good and can withstand the weather then what it means is that now we are creating the avenue for people to go round and buy or sell the waste that is generated and there will be value on plastic waste,” she said.
