Voltic Ghana has announced the setting up of permanent centers in some parts of the country to buy plastic waste, next year.
Joyce Ahiadorme, Corporate Affairs and Communications Manager at Voltic Ghana announced this at the final exercise for the company’s Buyback project which was held on Saturday at Glefe, a suburb of Dansoman.
“Our aim is to educate residents here to stop littering and to also let them know that there is an alternative of plastic waste and the need for us to see the plastic as not waste but wealth.”
The community buyback programme is a monthly volunteering programme organised every 3rd Saturday of the month with partners to buy used plastic from communities.
Joyce Ahiadome announced further that the first center which will be situated at Glefe, Dansoman will be operational in January 2020 and it will provide permanent jobs for six people in the area.
” For us, the main objective of this project is to give economic opportunities to community members.”
Five out of the six staff will move into the community on a daily basis to buy plastics from households.
The Community Buy-Back project was first piloted in Glefe, Dansoman making the current exercise the second in the area.
The final exercise drew over 50 volunteers from Voltic and Coliba as well as other entities while dozens of residents sold their plastics.
Prince Kwame Agbata, Chief Executive Officer of Coliba was confident the new centers will help raise awareness for environmental protection.
“For some people, it is for the money but they are indirectly saving the environment. The communication has to change. For the past 20 years, we’ve been educating them but now we need to let them understand the need for segregation and value for that.”
Voltic has, over the past 3 years engaged various stakeholders to create an ecosystem that drives collective sustainable action towards collecting and recycling a bottle for every one sold by 2030.
In addition to the monthly buyback programme, Voltic is involved with the following activities: Aggregator programme, Irecycle project, In-house collection, the Green Care Project being piloted with the Ablekuma-Anyaa Area of the Church of Pentecost, Waste for Education (W4E) project in collaboration with Pentecost Social Services (Pensos) and Zoomlion Foundation – two partnership programmes with the Church of Pentecost.