EcoSoA (Economía, Social y Ambiental)

The project aims to solve the issue of improper waste management in the country. About less than 20% of the waste produced are recycled. And this is due to the lack of proper waste management system. The biggest waste management company in Ghana only provide services to the public that can afford their services and they do not do selective waste collection. But the initiative intend to use a new approach by educating the people on waste classification and selective disposal as well as recycling. This approach is going to get rid of it for good by selling the classified and selectively collective waste to recycling companies thereby encouraging them to expand and create more jobs.  

Solid waste management has always and continues to be a huge problem Ghana is faced with in the sanitation and health sector. As it is part of the SDGs vision for the world to attain clean water and sanitation, this young people who came up with the initiative saw the huge problem and the suffering of their people and want to make a change. Each year, thousands of people especially pregnant women and children die from malaria of which the root cause is the lack of proper solid waste management which get choked in drainage systems. Less that 30% of the inhabitants of the cities in Ghana has access to collection service of which less than 5% are recycled. They end up in landfill which also creates another problem because of city expansion, are very close to homes and work place and this caused serious respiratory issues and other health problems. Recycling about 80% of the waste produced which is our projection will reduce this problem and health issues relate to poor waste management.

The target group is the general public of the community with which we are going to start with and at least 60% of the population according to the long term goal of the project. Educational sections will be held which we are hoping to work closely with community members to understand the importance of waste classification and recycle and how to do it. The lives of the general population of the community will be affected since the success of the project will mean a reduction in the health threat that poor waste management poses. Half of the people in the community lack access to the service of collection and the collected are not always disposed on time for which people are sometime refused for dumping more waste and this is a huge problem, so, providing a service which is more than happy to collect their classified waste because more waste mean more money will be a pleasant solution to their problem.

People not getting access the waste collection service is mostly due to the fact that they can not afford to pay the service and another is inability of coverage by the service provided due to limited landfills. The initiative intends to reduce cost of service provision since waste collected will in turn be sold to recycling companies which will be another source of income for the project. A frequent educational workshop will be held to educate the people on the  why and how of the waste management. Plastic waste will be collected in 20 selected day primary schools and boarding high schools. These waste will be collected by vehicle of the existing waste collection company and will be gathered at a collection center and further classified and sold to various plastic recycling companies. By the success of the 1st phase, and expansion will proceed using the money earned from collection and sales of waste. The second phase is collection of paper and carton waste which will be collected and sold in similar manner as the plastic waste. The third phase will be organic and ordinary waste of which the organic waste will be used to make compost, the knowledge of which the founders of the project has and continues to receive in their current university. This will be sold at a very small fee or donated to local farmers. The expansion of any of the phases will include increasing the number of schools targeted and adding more homes and work places. 

What makes this initiative unique is that, we will be collecting the waste from house to the recycle site. Also this initiative gives opportunity to people to learn how to classify waste and plastic waste especially bottles will be used for planting where family will get the chance to plant and cultivate short root vegetables using these bottles as well as using the organic waste as organic fertilizers for plant to basically prevent environmental contamination. The idea is that the collection of waste will be collect from household which we will give them the necessarily education they will need in terms of classification to make things easy for them.

This project is being divided into three phases:

1.  Collection of plastic waste and papers
2.   Collection of unrecoverable waste.
3.  Collection of organic waste.

Since plastic waste is currently the biggest improper waste disposal, the project seems to tackle this situation with a suitable solution to reuse these waste and educate people on the damage plastic waste can cause to our environment and also to reuse the paper waste from our books, exams sheets etc. With the second phase we intend to find a proper way to dispose these unrecoverable waste so we do not cause harm to people's health and the environment and the third phase we teach various communities how to make compost from their organic waste.

Some health issues like malaria and cholera has contributed to the death of many Ghanaian including women and children being the majority and the outbreak of these diseases are due to the improper waste management in the country. We believe that our solution will be able to reduce the high death rate and the out break of these disease and will improve people's health. Also this solution is set to control and reduce environmental contamination.

Since the project is in its setup stage, we are currently organizing senior high school where each school has about 1000 students in number. Within a year, we plan to reach out to about 60 schools in some selected regions in the country. In five years time we will be able to  reach out to 300 schools out of 475 senior high schools in Ghana

Our goal is to reach out to parents through their children who will be through the waste management workshop and these children will be able to educate their parents about sustainable waste management and basically reduce and control environmental contamination.

Our current challenge is the fact that we do not financial assist to tackle the cost involve in terms of getting the materials and tools needed for the accomplishment of this initiative. To break things down, there will be various clean-up exercises, workshops and the need to transport the waste collected to the recycle sites and all these there will be the need for financial support to make this happen. Another challenge might be the involvement of people  especially those who do not know the importance of keeping our environment clean and getting them to attend the various workshops out of their busy schedules.

In other to overcome these barriers, we intend to look for financial support through organization interested in keeping the environment clean and putting our health into consideration. We believe that explaining the consequence of improper disposal of waste to people, it will give them the knowledge to know that there is the need to manage our waste in a sustainable way to prevent the outbreak of various diseases, which we also intend to give workshops to schools to get students involve about this awareness.

We are currently not part of any organization.

We have five teammates(undergraduate students) working on this project.

Coming from an institution where every recyclable waste is recycled, we have gain the skill in identifying waste that can be recycle, how to separate them and managing them in other to prevent environmental contamination. As part of the academic program, students are being taught on how to manage waste and have taken practical lessons to get more knowledge on that.The team being students from this institution have gain the capacity and skills to bring this solution into reality because of the knowledge gained from our university. 

We are partnering with about three recycle companies in Ghana and are  yet to sign a contract with them.

EcoSoA being an initiative that focus on sustainable waste management for a sustainable environment intend to create a contamination-free environment. Some of the positive impacts this project intend to have on people are the fact that they get to know the  importance to have a clean environment, learn to classify and recycle waste, reduction or free from diseases outbreak like malaria, cholera etc. The people involve will be relieve from the stress of going to look for a place to dispose their waste because this initiative is to see to it that these will have access to the nearest waste collection center to make things easy for them.

We intend to seek for funds through different organizations and through partnership with recycle companies

Applying to Solve we think can help us get the needed financial support we need to bring our ideas into action to prevent environmental contamination and the outbreak of diseases such as Malaria and Cholera. With the support of Solve we believe we can reach out to many people through school children, market women etc to create awareness on the impact out improper waste disposal is causing to our environment and our health.

1. Government of Ghana
2. Ministry of water resource and sanitation
3. World Health Organization
4. Ministry of Forest and forest reserve

The team intend to use this fund in different ways such as;

1. Creating awareness on the plastic consumption by donating reusable bags to people in a way to promote the care of the environment through an initiative that aims to sensitize the communities so that it modifies its habits of plastic consumption.
2. Organization of clean-up exercises
3. Workshops.
4. Reforestation for carbon fixation