Support project for two bodies to reduce plastic waste | Social

Two nongovernmental organizations are in partnership to support women entrepreneurs working to reduce plastic litter in communities.

The initiative, called “Closing the Loop,” is to allow local communities to benefit from discarded plastic waste by collecting, reprocessing, and reselling it.

Launched in 2018, the partners provided seed money to equip a plastic waste reprocessing plant, as well as technical and business management training for female entrepreneurs to run the recycling plant for profit.

The recycling plant processes a range of plastic waste, including water bags, shampoo and detergent bottles, and large containers of cooking oil, turning them into grinds.

The grinds are then sold to recyclers to make items such as pavement blocks, construction sheeting, basins, and siding, most of which return to the community.

The project has already created eight jobs in Accra and diverted 35 tons of plastic from waste in its first 12 months of operation since 2018.

Camaraderie

A statement issued by the two organizations, the Accra-based Alliance to End Plastic Waste (The Alliance) and Asaase, said that with the partnership, the capacity of the reprocessing plant would increase, diverting 2,000 tons of plastic waste per year, creating more jobs in the process.

The initiative, according to the statement, would directly benefit people living in areas that did not have access to plastic waste collection and classification systems.

Alliance to End Plastic Waste includes companies that manufacture, use, sell, process, collect, and recycle plastics, including chemical and plastic manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters, and waste management companies.

The Asaase Foundation was also created in 2017 to enable Ghanaian businesswomen to play a key role in collecting Accra’s plastic waste for the benefit of their own communities.

Expertise

The statement added that the association had opened the possibility of having the experience of an academic partner, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in areas such as the development of new applications for the final market and the development of a new financing system for the plastic waste management in the country.

“A key pillar for ending plastic waste in the environment is the sustainable impact that it will bring to the well-being of local communities. That is why our association with Asaase is especially significant because Closing the Loop is the right step towards a circular economy model, “said Mr. Jacob Duer, President and CEO of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.

“What we value most in our partnership with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste is access to the waste management expertise that we can now leverage in our project, effectively multiplying the impact of the funds provided by the alliance to our project.” The founder and executive director of the Asaase Foundation, Dana Mosora, also said.