Top firms in Ghana’s oil and gas sector are uniting to fight plastic pollution, one of the largest global environmental hazards of today.
Downstream and upstream industry players like Tullow Oil, MODEC, Eni and Rigworld Solutions among others joined hands to clean beaches in Accra to help rid them of plastic as part of a larger campaign to ensure that the country is aware of the threat that plastics pose to its survival and that concrete steps are taken to tackle them head on.
Green Diversity Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organisation which has been campaigning on the dangers of single-use plastics since its formation in 2017 is the organisation that is facilitating the activities of the companies involved in this advocacy.
To mark world environment day 2023, the organisations came together to organise a clean-up at the La Beach, one of the largest and most popular beaches in Ghana’s capital.
“We know that in unity lies strength and in the unity of these major companies, we hope to mobilize the needed resources and to tackle the plastic menace head-on. The problem is that if we do not do anything about the rate at which plastics are increasing in volumes, we would suffer the bigger coast soon,” said Hobson Agyapong who is Founder of Green Diversity Foundation.
This year’s world environment day is being marked around the theme “Solutions to plastic pollution” with a reminder that people’s actions on plastic pollution matters. The theme seeks to also remind all stakeholders of the important steps governments and businesses can take in tackling plastic pollution.
“It is time to accelerate this action and transition to a circular economy. It is time to work in beating plastic pollution,” said Sandra Kyereh, Chief Executive Officer at Green Diversity.
For over two hours, the companies mobilized their staff and business associates- numbering over 500- cleaned up more than a 200-meter stretch of beach area, gathering a heavy volume of rubbers, used plastic bottles and other waste materials that otherwise would be swept into the ocean.
“What we have done here is only a tip of the ice-berg. It is a small part of what we all need to do. This planet is all that we have and it in our own interest that we stop plastics from destroying where we live and that is why we are putting ourselves together to do this,” said Antonio Pasquale, HSEQ Manager for Eni, speaking on behalf of some of the organisations involved in the project.
In Ghana, plastics litter large swathes of the five-hundred-kilometre coastline and impacts marine spaces. Estimates for Ghana’s contribution to global marine debris range from approximately 92,000 to 260,000 metric tons every year, or one to three percent of the global total.
