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As Ghana continues to grapple with high youth unemployment, the Green Africa Youth Organisation (GAYO), an environmental advocacy NGO, has urged young people to explore opportunities in the waste management sector.
According to the Co-Founder of GAYO, Desmond Alugnoa, the sector offers several opportunities to turn waste into wealth, reduce unemployment, and protect the environment.
He made this appeal on Wednesday, 17 September, at the sidelines of a stakeholder meeting aimed at improving the Zero Waste Story Playbook framework to help producers create more sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging.
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Stakeholder meeting aimed at improving the Zero Waste Story Playbook framework
Mr Alugnoa stated:
We try as much as possible to educate and sensitise communities, especially young people, even in universities, to understand that turn your problem into a solution because in general actually landing on a job is difficult, but actually beyond landing on a job you go to school to be able to solve problems for money or solve problems for a living.
He continued:
Young people should take advantage of the waste situation, those who are producing biochar, those who are producing charcoal briquette from coconut husks, those who are producing different things from coconut fibre, and those who are producing the compost for our farmers, they are like our true heroes.
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Stakeholder meeting aimed at improving the Zero Waste Story Playbook framework
Mr Alugnoa further highlighted the importance of the playbook, emphasising that it stresses a human-centred approach to waste management:
Its approach is human centred as it intends to deploy a mechanism that conserves and preserves people's jobs, but also create new ones because we consider it as an emerging economy and something that is going to help to actually employ more.
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He added:
One other thing that is very eminent in this framework is the recognition of the waste pickers, the informal sector, especially, how communities, households can incorporate these people into their practice in order to make it.
Also speaking at the event, Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Professor Reginald Quansah, urged intensified government efforts in waste management and recommended the implementation of a ban on plastics.