Environment360, a pioneer of community recycling, has held a circular economic exhibition and green career fair at the Pick-It Centre in Tema Newton, to promote a just transition into a production system based on the reuse and regeneration of materials.
The fair held under the theme “Empowering waste pickers to create an alternative urban waste management system,” was participated by several waste pickers and schoolchildren in the area.
The exhibition provided community members with an opportunity to learn about the circular economy and their role in it, climate change, the development of sustainable habits and the transformation of plastics.
In each exhibition, participants understood the dangers plastic can cause to their environment, and how to adopt a sustainable lifestyle to reduce the amount of plastic in the environment and were given live demonstrations of the recycling process on its modular recycling technology.
Programmes Manager of Environment360, Selasi Charwey-Glover, took participants through circular economy, linear economy and its principles and urged them to be innovative in optimising the use of plastic materials.
“We need to keep finding new ways of re-using our plastics and design new ways for the future. The recycling industry helps in waste reduction, drives greater resource separation, provides green jobs, and reduces carbon emissions,” she said.
she outlined career paths such as environmental scientist, environmental engineer, and agricultural and food scientist among others.
Environment360 has advocated segregation of waste beginning from school as key and urged pupils to choose careers in the recycling and other green economic industries for the sustainability and health of the environment whilst urging teachers to be of good guidance and motivate students into such fields.
Head of Environmental Health at the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Wisdom Aditse, commended Environment360 for putting the event together to enlighten community members on the need to sustain the linear economy.
According to him, a linear economy which focuses on waste reduction, reuse of waste and recycling leading to profitability, is currently unsustainable because once somebody uses a product it is thrown away.
“We are not used to sourcing separation of items, we box everything together and it ends up at the landfills and we always have waste and we have to pay for it.
“If we can sell this idea to every member of each community across the country and they start to source separation of every item, it can be sent to various facilities like the pick-it centre kind to reduce the amount of waste we send to the landfilled,” he said.
