While
others started a late Saturday morning, students of BlueCrest College woke up
early and came together to clean up coasts of Accra from plastic, debris and
tons of irresponsible waste.
Organised
by BlueCrest’s Department of Mass Communication, the ‘Ocean Clean Up Exercise’
was held at the Christianborg beach area behind Osu castle early on June 8,
2019. This initiative was part of the Environment Day activities at the
college.
Department
HoD Sreemoyee Thapa Dasgupta said such activities were essential to sensitise
students towards coastal pollution and how it threatens human life.
“We, as
citizens of Ghana, need to take responsibility for our environment. We can’t
blame the government for everything. We need to take initiatives to combat all
that is going wrong in our society.”
Students
segregated recyclable waste from debris and handed them over to responsible
authorities.
Deborah
Andorful, one of the students who volunteered for this initiative, said there
was an urgent need for people to cut down the use of plastic.
“People
use too many plastic products. I really wish we would reduce using it. It has
ruined our beaches.”
BlueCrest
Student Representative Council member Enoch Doe Semana urged the government to
put stronger and stricter laws in place that would discourage people from
polluting their environment.
A study
in 2015 said that Ghana generated 302,192 kg/day of plastic waste, and 81% of
it was inadequately managed (plastic waste dumped in uncontrolled
landfills). This waste did not include ‘littered’ plastic waste.
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