An eco-friendly project to aid efforts at tackling the plastic waste nuisance and its growing threat to the environment through recycling has been launched at the Asante-Mampong Campus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW).
The students are being assisted with the techniques to turn sachet and polythene bags into handmade products such as hamper and shopping baskets, laundry and fruit baskets, flower pots and many others.
The project is a collaborative effort between ?Collect and Recycle Ecologically (CARE)?, an NGO, and the University?s Environmental Health and Sanitation Education Department.
The expectation is that it would also help to open up job opportunities for the people.
Mr. Jib Hagan, Global Development Director and Founder of CARE, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that, the project had been successfully piloted in selected basic and second-cycle institutions.
He said there could be no doubt that it would provide the students with sustainable sources of income.
Mr. Hagan said while plastics constituted only about 20 per cent of the volume of municipal solid waste, their low density and slowness to decompose made them a visible pollutant to the environment.
It is estimated that just around seven per cent of the about 80 per cent of the post-consumer plastic waste sent to the landfill sites is recycled, something that is contributing to ecological damage with devastating consequences on socio-economic development.
Mr. Hagan said the plan is to roll the project out to the other universities across the country.
GNA
