The Waste Management Director at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Engr. Solomon Noi, has called for a ban on single-use plastics.

This, according to him, is because recycling companies find them expensive to process.

“The issue of the ban comes in because as an engineer, I know what it takes to process single-use plastics. First, it is not economically viable, because you have to aggregate a lot of them to get a chunk of whatever you want to do. So, most aggregators or most companies don’t want to go into the venture of processing single-use plastics” he said.

The indiscriminate dumping of plastic waste into drains leads to a blockage that prevents the free flow of water.

Single-use plastics constitute a major component.  And in a season where showers can lead to flooding in the major streets of Accra, there’s a need to deal with pollution. Plastic waste blocks drains, thereby causing flooding.

Speaking at Green Africa Youth Organization and Youth Climate Council conference, Engr. Noi added that the Assembly would continue to desilt drains to avert perennial flooding.

“Among the very short-term plans that we have in mitigating the issue of floods is to target specific tertiary and secondary drains where we do massive or total desilting,” he said.

The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) specialist at UNICEF, Samuel Amoako Mensah, also called for stricter enforcement of waste management regulations.

“We do have in place as a country, the policy framework to deal with many of these issues. Perhaps the issues are around how we execute them to the full. Obviously, there may be factors that mitigate against implementing them to the full. But we have to continue to improve around regulating services and behavior. The general public also has a big stake and role to play,” he added.

Meanwhile, some traders at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle have been expressing concerns over a large pile of refuse close to the big drains, which causes a blockage and flooding when it rains.