Prince Kwame Agbata, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of COLIBA Recycling Company, has called on food vendors to opt for sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics to curb environmental degradation.
He explained to the B&FT that the environmental cost and human health implications of improper disposal of single-use plastic wastes is immeasurable, and deserves urgent attention.
He said: “The single solution to single-use plastic waste is to invest in collection infrastructure and ensure that we are introducing biodegradables and recycling what is already in the value chain”.
COLIBA’s aim is to make it easy for people to segregate their waste and have them recycled.
While urging food vendors to switch from single-use plastic takeaway packs to eco-friendly alternatives, such as processed banana leaves, the COLIBA CEO reiterated the need for sensitisation and awareness campaigns so as to educate Ghanaians on the importance of adopting proper waste management practices.
Regarding its health implications, he said evidence abounds that there already exist some micro-plastics in or bodies, a causative factor for several forms of cancers while other micro-plastics also find their way into the soil from plastics, such as takeaway packs.
“Some amount of these plastics are also used for packaging vegetables once they are harvested, so it is really a big problem if we don’t address the packaging issue and ensure that it is done in a sustainable and eco-friendly manner,” Agbata added.
He described the plastic economy as a huge one, and that it will take at least 50 years for Ghana to recover plastic that is already in its value chain. “We have so much plastics in the value chain and so we have to invest in recycling while we begin to introduce cost effective biodegradable alternatives”.
He further revealed that the plastic sector in the country has grown by 200 percent over the last 11 years, citing plastic bottle recycling which has seen exponential growth from 2 percent to 12 percent as a case in point. “That is more than 1000 percent increase in the recycling market,” Agbata explained as he painted a picture of the size of Ghana’s plastic economy.
He stressed the need for the plastics economy to be formalised, detailing that as plastic-making companies continue to expand, there is the need for the right infrastructure to be put in place to ensure that things are done right.
“Most of the plastic sector is highly informal and they are scared of getting formalised because of taxation, so it is important that all stakeholders get on board – the Ghana Revenue Authority, Environmental Protection Agency and the likes – if we really want to solve this plastic problem,” he noted.
From a food vendor’s perspective on single-use plastics, the B&FT also spoke with Boakyewaa Mary, who operates the God is King mini restaurant – a fried-rice vending outlet at Oyarifa, and she has this to say: “I am aware of the environmental and health implications of the single-use plastic materials I use in packaging food for my customers because I am fortunate to be educated, but the truth is that I have no alternative but to do what everybody is doing. I am told the eco-friendly packaging materials are expensive and besides, I don’t even know where to get it to buy”.
She, however, expressed willingness to transition from the single-use plastic packaging culture to a sustainable alternative should she get the packs at a comparatively cheaper cost.
To minimise the environmental implications of single-use plastic materials from food vendors, Mr. Agbata said it is imperative that standards regulatory agencies in Ghana begin to work with food packaging companies and stakeholders, such as the recyclers association, to ensure that packaging materials meet the required standards.
Furthermore, he noted that there is the need to ensure that the right amount of plastic is used for the right material type of packaging, indicating that while some materials are very easy to recycle, others are complicated because they are a mixture of different types of plastics which he said makes recycling expensive. “Even pickers cannot pick these mixture of plastics because their value is lower for them, so they will rather do cherry-picking – selecting the good plastic from the bad ones.”
Notwithstanding their eco-friendliness, Agbata stated that biodegradable materials also have limitations including; cost and the technology to develop them, revealing that, “not all biodegradables are environmentally and ecologically-friendly and so it is important to find the right material type which also comes at a cost”.
While calling on waste management companies to invest in collection infrastructure to ensure that single-use plastic waste materials are properly shredded so that they can come back as recycled end-product, he said it is about time people started segregating their waste at home.
Consumption of packaged food has risen substantially in recent decades. With a 5 percent annual growth rate, the worldwide packaged food market was valued at US$1.9trillion in 2020, and is expected to reach US$3.4trillion by 2030.
However, environmentalists are concerned about the increased plastic pollution generated by the food industry. For the past 70 years, it has been outlined that around 8 billion tonnes of plastic has been generated.
Ms. Earle, Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in America, in an interview with Africa Renewal, seen by the B&FT, warns that sea life is being destroyed from every direction by a combination of rising temperatures and plastic waste. She notes that since the 1950s, the world has lost 50 percent of its global coral reefs and 90 percent of its big fish to plastic waste.
“Oceans are choking on plastic junk — millions of tonnes of water bottles, soda bottles, drinking straws and single-use plastic bags. 99 percent of all seabirds will have ingested plastic by 2050 if nothing is done to reverse the trend,” she said.
