A waste management pilot project will soon start in selected communities in Accra to help provide the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) with the needed data to reduce carbon emissions.
The project, “Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s/C40-Climate Finance Facility (CFF) Solid Waste Source Separation and Community Compost Kickoff Mission 2022” is being sponsored by the United Kingdom, Germany (GIZ) and France.
Mrs Elizabeth Kwatsoe Tawiah Sackey, the Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive made this known at a meeting with heads of waste collectors, waste management practitioners, heads of department of the AMA, academia, and the media in Accra.
She said in 2015, the AMA with support from the C40 cities conducted a Green House Gas inventory to understand the key contributors of carbon emissions in the city of Accra.
“The report showed close to 44 per cent of carbon and other dangerous gas emissions emanate from poorly managed solid and liquid waste related activities, and fast-forward the city had to strategize in finding actions that will change the story in the report hence, the development of the Accra’s Climate Action Plan (CAP 2020-2025),” Mr Sackey stated.
She noted that as part of the target actions in the plan, the city must drastically reduce the amount of waste that is sent to the landfill sites, saying; “As a city this requires a circular way of managing the waste right from where it is being generated.”
Mrs Sackey said the pilot project would provide the AMA and other stakeholders with the needed data and other necessary changes in waste management approach, policies, and Assembly by-laws to drive a people-centred and inclusive clean energy transition.
She said, to this end, no one would be left behind as the project would be extended to all neighboring municipal assemblies to be able to achieve a clean Accra and meet the feed-stock demand of the compost plant.
The mayor expressed gratitude to C40 cities for their constant support to the AMA, saying; “You are a useful partner on the path of finding solutions to our climate change situation in Accra, Africa, and the world at large. A big thanks to the Climate Finance Network and the GIZ for the work done so far on this project.”
Mr O.B. Amoah, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, said climate change did not discriminate since it was causing havoc to all nations across the world and there was therefore the need for immediate action.
He called on stakeholders to promote monitoring to ensure that the C40 City Finance Facility implementation becomes successful.
Mr Amoah commended the AMA for launching the Climate Action Plan, which had provided the basis of the C40 finance facility.
He said sustainable technologies such as re-use and re-cycling were the best way of mitigating the situation, hence the need for all to share ideas on how to manage our waste properly.
Mr Solomon Noi, the AMA Waste Management Director told the waste management practitioners that the project is an integrated one that involved social welfare and community development experts to convince the citizenry to shift from the way they do things concerning waste.
He called on city authorities to review the by-laws to give it some biting force, saying “The appealing, sensitization, and communication would be done but there are still recalcitrant ones, saboteurs and the law should be made to work because all over the world where source separation are done, their waste management is without problem.”
Mr Noi said if the projects were managed and skilled up, it would lift the city from the bottom level and climb up the ladder to where the waste would be turned into assorted products which would help prolong the lifespan of the landfill sites, while providing employment opportunities to the informal sector.
He appealed to all informal waste service providers to conform to law and come under regulation by bringing some spices into their operations by dressing neatly, saying “If not then you cannot form part of this project, because we want the citizens to know that we shift completely from our usual ways of doing things to efficient waste management practices.”
