Let’s unite our effort to deal with plastic pollution – High Commissioner

The British High Commissioner, Iain Walker, has called for united effort to effectively manage plastic waste, to prevent plastic pollution.

“We need to think about the planet. We need to think about plastics”, he said when he visited the Agbobloshie e-waste dumping site in Accra.

About one million plastic bottles are estimated to be bought daily across the globe and each one of these takes 650 years to degrade.

Mr. Walker stated that the problem of plastic was affecting all countries including Ghana and Britain

It was affecting the environment and the future of generations yet unborn and he called for Ghana to the effort, nationally and regionally, the fight against waste.

“This is global challenge, but is one that starts at home. My plea is that we take it seriously and do something about it.”

“I hope they take it with the UK and some other international partners because this is not an individual issue for Ghana.”

Mr. Walker’s visit to the place was to acquaint himself with the activities of the ‘Agbogloshie.Shine Initiative’, a non-profit foundation that seeks to fund social enterprises and projects dedicated to applying design-thinking to solve problems regarding e-waste.

The e-waste site is the destination for locally generated automobile and electronic scrap collected from across the city of Accra.

He was taken on a tour of the place by Mr. Joseph Awuah-Darko, the co-Founder and interacted with artisans into waste recycling, and those who have been burning electronic waste products to extract copper.

He applauded the initiative to recycle waste and give skills training to the youth in the area.

“In context, waste management is a major problem and I will like to know a bit more about what, if anything, the international community can be doing to assist the government here to address some of this.”

He made reference to the “Blue Charter” signed at the end of the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London by the member countries, describing it as a bold, co-ordinated push to protect the ocean from the effects of climate change, pollution and over-fishing.

The problem at Agbogloshie was beyond plastic and needed urgent attention from the government and other stakeholders to address.

Mr. Woode said the Initiative was into design thinking and finding solutions to the waste problem at Agbogloshie.

Source: GNA

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