AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

BAN NON-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS

Would some of you folks who hover around, work directly with, and have the ears of my President – His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor – pass on this letter to him. Put it on his desk or the best place where he would see it and read. Remember: location, location, location! Please do not file it away or treat it as a matter to be handled by a government functionary. Thank you for your kindness.

Dear Mr President:

I think you are gorgeous, with eyes to die for. Some of my naughty male friends don’t think so. Well, I think they are jealous but that is neither here nor there. I am writing to you about a matter I consider urgent that is giving me sleepless nights and it might be doing same to you too as well as many others in our 51-year old country. It is about the matter of the deplorable state of our national environmental sanitation. Since you cannot solve the entire problem because of time constraints, I entreat you to take on just one aspect of it that I consider solvable and is at the heart of the overall problem.

It is this: Before you exit the presidency, please ban the use of non-biodegradable plastics – the type that do not decompose but fly around. You see, I know for a fact that presidents love to leave legacies. This is one legacy I would love my President to leave for generations yet unborn. If you do, your memory would forever stick in my mind as not simply gorgeous but also a big-time problem-solver. You would have saved Ghana from a sad but avoidable and quiet destruction by an unassuming monster – plastics.

Collectively, plastic trash represents a festering sore on the path we have chosen as a nation. Sad! We are precariously walking a thin fine line, a tight rope of environmental sanitation, and getting closer and closer to a tipping point where we could fall off the cliff. As you know, Ghana is increasingly becoming filthy. Cities, towns and villages are not spared from this rot. The major suspect in this matter is plastics.

You see, Mr President, long before plastics, we were. We did just fine. Without a doubt we did some really unsanitary things like drinking water from the same cup, by which act we constantly ran the risk of sharing our poverty-laden infectious diseases. We even used to wrap food with leaves (how I miss those days!)

Then this thing called plastics landed on our shores like the white man of old landed with gin in one hand and the blessed Bible in the other. We know what happened with that eventful visit (they took some of our kith and kin away as slaves to sweat blood to develop their civilizations and then colonized our land). In a similar fashion, we the people of Ghana have fallen in love with plastics because it’s so convenient. We have accepted plastics without the necessary probing questioning. It is as if plastics have tricked us and we do not seem to suspect that we have a monster in our midst.

Mr President, plastic waste is a world-wide problem. It is not unique to Ghana. But increasingly, several countries are waking up to the damage plastics cause their environment and with the needed courage of conviction, they are attacking the monster. We are not! The plastic menace is not on the national agenda. A few years ago, there was a short-lived but failed attempt to ban plastics in Accra (by Mayor Agyiri-Blankson). Recently, the rhetoric on the national level seems to focus on recycling as if that should be the only way.

Gleaning stories from across the world (e.g. Uganda, Zanzibar, China, Ireland, India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Kenya, UK and USA) reveals multiple strategies, used in combination, by various countries to control the quantity of plastics. These include but not limited to: Placing high taxes on plastics to render them unattractive to use. Cut down on the importation and production of plastics. Provide free reusable plastic bags. Place a ban on the production and distribution of ‘one-use’ plastic bags (the type used to bag everything we buy which we mindlessly throw away as soon we remove the items bought). Explore alternatives to plastic bags – e.g. jute bags so people will cut down on the use of plastics. Ban the production and usage of thin plastic bags (the type that flies and floats). Place an outright ban on all plastics!! Institute ‘plastic-bag-free’ days. Another strategy, of course, is recycling.

My President, as a country, we have not fully explored strategies on the usage and management of plastics, nor shown real and consistent commitment to deal with the menace. Undoubtedly, adopting some of the above strategies will lead to financial losses to companies and individuals whose livelihoods depend on plastics. But then, again, before plastics, we were! Some of the strategies will entail a confrontation with the plastic industry and interest groups which include plastic manufacturers, importers, distributors, sachet water producers, and even the new class of businesses of plastic re-cyclers and their multitude of cousins – sachet water sellers. But of course, you are the president and you can confront anyone head-on.
Mr President, I struggle with these questions: Do we want to live in a country in which plastics have inter-locked the earth? What is the impact of our present actions on the future of this county? I shudder to think of what would happen to Ghana if we do nothing now to effectively confront the plastic waste menace. Currently, the early warning signs are vivid. Land, sea, rivers, gutters, backyards and roadsides all harbour secret sorrows as multi-coloured plastics anchor themselves in our collective consciousness and we continue to inflict such harsh treatment on the environment.

Please take up this matter as an urgent national agenda just as you have admirably shown in other matters, especially in ensuring that Ghanaians enjoy peace under your leadership. Shame those who think that from this point onwards, you are nothing but a ‘lame-duck’ President. The benefits of running the last lap of your presidency is that as you move closer and closer to the finish line, the only thing you can lose is not to win.

You also have the beautiful enviable position of behaving like a dead horse, not fearing even the sharpest of knives. You can’t fear a thing; you have no re-election blues to worry about. You can therefore be as bold and fearless as you want to be and take this high road to save Ghana from the plastic monster.

Please use this unique privilege to put a stop to the ticking time bomb of managing our national filth so your legacy will loom larger as Ghana aspires to advance to a middle-income status by the fast approaching 2015. We cannot do so in filth. Before you take a bow out of the presidency, make a dent in this urgent matter of environmental sanitation. Since time is not on your side, at least give us the minimum. By presidential order, ban the use of non-biodegradable (constipated) plastics.

Respectfully yours, Yaa Doris

+233208286817; dorisdartey@yahoo.com