The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) is working to enforce the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system to manage plastic waste in the country.

The EPR is a strategic policy intervention where by the estimated environmental costs associated with a product throughout the product’s life cycle are added to the market price of that product, especially in the waste management sector.

Currently, the ministry is working on a law that will make the EPR mandatory for all producers or marketers of plastic products in the country.

The Director of Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at MESTI, Lydia Essuah, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic last Wednesday (June 21), said the move was meant to stop plastic pollution in the country.

“We want to ensure that once you put out a plastic product on the market, you are mandated by law to collect it.

In this regard, you have to make sure that as part of your marketing arrangement, you put in place a collection system so that anyone who buys your product knows where to take the waste to after using it,” she said.

Mrs Essuah made this known during a stakeholders’ workshop organised for key actors in the waste management sector in Accra.

 The workshop discussed lessons learnt from the implementation of a project dubbed:

“Marine Litter and Microplastics: promoting environmentally sound management of plastic waste and achieving the prevention and minimisation of the generation of plastic waste in Ghana”.

The project was implemented by MESTI in collaboration with its partners, including the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (UNEA) and the Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions.

The project looked at the transboundary movement of plastics, the reduction of plastic waste into the ocean and capacity building for law enforcement.

As part of the project, MESTI trained officers from the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) on their transboundary movement of plastics and what they could do to intervene.

“The officers are to ensure that at the point of entry when plastics are coming in and going out, we know what to look out for, what to admit in and what not to admit,” Mrs Essuah said. 

More interventions

MESTI’s Director of Policy added that efforts were also being made to limit the use of plastics in restaurants and food packaging joints.

“We are working with the restaurant operators and encouraging them to come up with takeaways that are made from sea weeds instead of plastics,” she said.

Again, she said MESTI had completed processes for the roll out of a plastic-free schools initiative in senior high schools and tertiary institutions.

Mrs Essuah said as part of the initiative, MESTI had set up eco-friendly committees in those schools to help establish plastic waste segregation.

“We have linked these schools with off-takers who come to take the plastics once it has been gathered.

Training modules have also been developed on how to teach children plastic management,” she said.

Financing plastic waste management

Mrs Essuah said since waste management was a shared responsibility, MESTI had strengthen partnership with the private sector to put in place the required infrastructure in the value chain for managing plastic waste.

She noted that the main challenge had to do with financing, “which is why we are engaging them on how to explore innovative financing for plastic management”.

The MESTI director said at the policy level, the ministry had identified the polluter pay principle as the prudent way of raising funds for plastic waste management.

“Data shows that 74 per cent of companies operating in Ghana make use of plastic packaging; so if we put plastic products on the market, then there should be a system to get it collected,” she said.
 

Attitudinal change

Mrs Essuah further urged members of the public to cultivate the habit of purchasing products with their own bowls and containers.

Such a move, she noted, would reduce the amount of plastic that was littered.

The Administrator of Ghana National Canoe Fisheries Council, Sadat Kofi Morgan, said the plastic menace had affected fisher folk because harvest had gone down.

“They are really caching plastic instead of fish.

Also, because of the pollution of the water by plastic, the plastic bags get entangled in their outboard motors and it causes damage,” he said.

He urged the fishermen to take steps to ensure that their surroundings and the beaches were clean. 

SOURCE: GraphicOnline