From the 2010 Housing and Population Census figures of 24.2 million, Ghana’s population is currently up to an estimated 30.4 million. If each person disposes of five pieces of non-biodegradable plastic waste every week, we would be dumping about seven billion pieces a year into the environment. Multiply that by 10 years of dumping of plastic waste that will not decompose and become one with nature for about 300 to 500 years. It is irresponsible to continue to dump such large quantities of plastic waste into the finite size of earth we know of as Ghana.
The plastic waste get dumped into all sorts of spaces. No space is spared in the 238,535 square kilometres finite size of earth. Not our water bodies, our gutters, our farmlands, our roadsides, our 560 kilometres coastline of the mighty Atlantic Ocean, or tree tops (when the wind lift them upwards!) are spared.
Plastic bags are used for all sorts of things unholy including as poop-bags, which are tossed. What is upsetting about plastic bags is that we do not actually use them. We only have a touch-and-go relationship with them. They literally pass through our hands as items of convenience, and as holding carrier cells for the odds and ends we buy. Then, mindlessly, we dump them. If we were to pause and think of what happens to each plastic bag after it briefly crosses paths with us, our conscience may slap us.
Increasingly, several countries are introducing measures to reduce, ban and manage plastic waste because it is clear to all that continuing on the current path is unconscionable and more so, is not sustainable. But Ghana’s government is silent on this critical matter. Yet, every well-meaning Ghanaian is convinced that plastic waste is a national crisis matter.
Recently reported comments by Professor Frimpong-Boateng, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation is disappointing. He made it sound as if Ghanaians are calling for a “wholesale ban” of plastics. That is far from the truth! We all know that plastics cannot be banned on a wholesale basis because after all, some plastics are good. For instance, for now, sachet water provides a key source of drinking water for the majority of our population. So although it is single use plastic, we cannot yet ban sachet water or water bottles!
BAN THE NUISANCE PLASTIC BAGS
It is the nuisance plastics that must be banned. Plastic carrier bags of varied colours and sizes constitute a nuisance, and are destroying our environment. As a people, we have proved that we are incapable of managing plastic waste. We collect just a small fraction of the waste.
There is a myth about recycling plastics. It is estimated that only about two percent of the plastic waste we generate in Ghana is recycled. So any rhetoric about recycling is nothing less than a big lie, and a grand excuse not to do anything. Typically, whenever people are not eager to do the right thing, they make up elaborate excuses.
Ghana needs to have a major reckoning over plastic waste. Former President Mahama made some pretentious moves to ban plastic bags but he appeared to have lacked the courage to actually ban it. This is the third year of the Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo presidency. Unfortunately, there is not even the slightest hope that single use plastics of any sort will be banned. Next year is election year, and as important and bold decisions and actions go, it is unlikely that the government will dare to take this responsible action, which although will be good for Ghana, may not be tolerable as a vote-earner.
Why has it taken Professor Frimpong-Boateng three years to develop a draft plastic waste policy? No policy on plastic waste will make sense if it does not include reduction in the quantities of waste we generate.
THE EARTH DESERVES RESPECT
We cannot get away with our destructive attitude toward plastic waste. We may choose to remain in denial for a little while longer. But the foolhardiness of our reckless disregard for the environment by tolerating the piling up of non-biodegradable plastics into our side of the earth will soon catch up with us in a big way. The universe is already punishing us but we are disregarding it. Our plastic-choked gutters, the floods, and the dirty beaches are reminders that nature abhors plastic waste.
The following Kikuyu proverb (a Kenyan ethnic group) is packed with lots of advice for the way we treat our earth. It says: “You must treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It is loaned to you by your children.”This earth was there long before us. Our parents and numerous generations before us all passed through this earth for whatever number of years they were gifted. The earth was given to us in trust by our ancestors for our descendants; that is why we need to preserve it for the next generation.
We do not know the age of the earth. We are here on a stop-over to wherever we go after death, since none of us can get out of this life alive. The earth is therefore a gift. Gifts can be squandered—irresponsibly. So our mindless acts that result in the destruction of the earth is the most irresponsible act of national destruction. We are bruising the earth with plastic waste!
WASTEFULNESS DOES NOT PAY
A Native American mythology has it that once upon a time, human beings could eat the clouds! Those days, the clouds were not up high in the skies as they are today. The clouds hang really low so people could just raise their arms and reach out to pluck a chunk of cloud like we pluck fruits from a tree. People took the clouds for granted and became very wasteful.
Over time, they developed the habit of plucking any quantity of the clouds, ate just a little and dumped the remaining as waste. They did not bother to pluck just enough for their immediate needs. The spirit of wastefulness drove them to always pluck more than they needed and mindlessly throw away the bulk of the harvest, which they did not need in the first place. Easy come; easy go! After all, they did not have to struggle to grow the cloud and to pluck it.
This attitude of plucking more than was needed went on until the gods got fed up with human beings and decided to punish them. As punishment, the gods commanded the clouds to be raised up from the reach of humans and rendered them unfit for consumption. That is how come humans can now only see the clouds up high and above—untouchable and non-consumable.
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