The Burden of Globalization: Environmental Detriment Sparks Innovation in Ghana (Part I)
Techiman, Ghana, 2019. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
The manifestation of the plastic crisis in Ghana is directly related to the ideologies and agendas associated with globalization. These structural changes, which sacrifice long-term sustainability, have resulted in the forced adaptation to a linear economy of single-use and indiscriminate disposal. Consequently, environmental and public health crises have emerged. However, citizens throughout the country, specifically in the city of Techiman, are looking within themselves to innovate and develop solutions on their own.
This article expands upon my high school capstone research on single-use plastic pollution in Ghana. Today, I actively reflect upon the internalized assumptions that brought me to Ghana and the systems of privilege that enabled me to do so. To read more about this process of reckoning with my identity, see the section ‘Learning and Unlearning’ below.
In sharing this revised research, I am continually striving to bring a constructive lens to my work, one that demonstrates my growth as a global learner.
The Proliferation of the Plastic Industry
Up until the 1980s, Ghanaians used organic wrapping for goods, such as leaf wrappers and brown paper. These methods were beneficial, as the packaging was derived locally and decomposed in the environment. However, these methods contributed to poor sanitation and water-borne diseases. In response, international standards of public health and development emerged, inciting the proliferation of the plastics industry to minimize sanitation risk and maximize industrial profit.
Subsequently, the rise of globalization during the late 20th century resulted in the introduction of cheap goods into the economies of the global south.
The onset of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDG) paved the way for large international corporations to introduce plastic packaging to provide a cheap, sterile, and versatile alternative to organic wrapping.
The UN sought to halve the proportion of the global population without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Although an altruistic endeavor in essence, this transition toward a globalized public health norm subjugated the Ghanaian government within the international linear economy.
Additionally, this MDG led to the commodification of a natural resource and resulted in an extensive plastic pollution crisis.
Water Sachets
Rapid urbanization and population growth have outpaced municipal efforts to expand potable water infrastructure in Ghana. Due to the aforementioned international pressure, the private sector responded with the solution of plastic packaging.
Specifically, the water sachet.
Water sachets emerged in the 1990s through Chinese machinery that heat-sealed water in a plastic sleeve. Due to the lack of standardized, potable infrastructure across the nation, water sachets have become the ubiquitous solution to the urban water crisis.
A littered water sachet. Kukurantumi, Ghana 2017. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
However, the water sachets have become the most prominent form of waste in Ghana. Due to the countrywide implementation of the water sachet, this litter consumes the streets of both rural and urban communities.
Production, Consumption, and Disposal
Like most countries, Ghana functions on a traditional linear economy - goods are made, used, and disposed of. This method lacks sustainable solutions to challenges in the economy and the environment.
Today, the imports of plastic in Ghana are dominated by countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Belgium, and India. According to the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the country imports 2.58 million tons of raw plastics annually, while only 270 tons of plastics are produced in Ghana.
This endeavor was a significant accomplishment for the global capitalist community.
Similarly, the recycling industry was established in the early 2000s, allowing Chinese companies to pursue 90% of the market space in conjunction with their international development goals.
Ghana generates upwards of 1 million tons of plastic waste annually, only 2-5% of which is recycled.
There are approximately 25 recycling facilities located in metropolitan cities dispersed around the country, such as Accra, Tema, Kumasi, and Takoradi. These facilities recycle up to 320 tons of plastic waste per day.
The vast majority of the country's waste is mismanaged, and effectively consumes the natural environment whether it is burned (11%) or ends up in landfills (38%), surrounding land (28%), or the sea (23%).
Consequently, smaller cities such as Techiman lack access to urbanized recycling facilities. Therefore, the current waste management system functions as follows: an individual can pay to have their trash bin removed and brought to the Techiman Landfill.
If only that system were a tangible reality.
Community bottle dumping site. Techiman, Ghana, 2019. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
This transition to the private sector of recycling has improved waste collection services in major cities, while simultaneously isolating the urban poor from affordable waste management.
Deputy Director of Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency Cindy Badoe claims, “Many Ghanaians are not unwilling, but unable to pay for waste management services”.
Therefore, the most common methods for disposal of plastic are burning, littering, and human-made dumping piles, all of which pose an immense environmental and public health threat.
Dumping pile “Mt. Kilimanjaro”. Techiman, Ghana, 2019. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
This is the most feasible alternative for Ghanaians who can’t afford to recycle.
The Municipal Chief Executive of the Techiman assembly reported in 2018 that almost half of households within the Municipality dispose of their solid waste indiscriminately in open spaces. A small fraction of the waste is collected from local trash bins and brought to the landfill, where it is burned and compressed.
This method of disposal has proved to be an environmental hazard.
Environmental Burden: Sea, Air, and Land
Plastic is commonly disposed of on land without waste bin maintenance. Littered plastic clogs ground gutter systems, creating stagnant water: an attraction for mosquitos, and a breeding ground for subsequent bacteria.
This contributes to the transmission of waterborne diseases -- which plastics were expected to resolve.
Plastic in the Tano River. Techiman, Ghana, 2019. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
Similarly, heavy rainfalls contribute to immense flooding as drainage channels empty their waste into the ocean. Approximately 23% of waste in Ghana is driven to the ocean, and on a global scale, we are polluting the ocean with around 12.7 million tons of plastic each year.
Lack of environmental awareness coupled with poor recycling infrastructure also results in the burning of plastics as a method of disposal. Consequently, when subjected to incineration, the polyethylene plastic produces greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. All of this contributes to climate change through the heating of the earth’s surface temperature as GHGs become trapped in the atmosphere.
Additionally, this particulate matter and GHGs contribute to air pollution, resulting in over 28,000 premature deaths in Ghana each year.
Bringing waste to landfills helps to remove the unsightly mess from the streets and inculcates a habit of waste collection. However, this method is equally undesirable as plastic cannot biodegrade, creating a permanent waste heap.
When I visited Techiman in 2019, I learned that their landfill has been at capacity since the beginning of 2018, yet it is still being used as the final collection site. The Techiman landfill is encroaching on the city, as approximately 1,000 people were forced to migrate from the surrounding area due to the pollution from the runoff of the landfill.
The Techiman Landfill. Techiman, Ghana, 2019. Photo: Alexis Jablonski.
The Burden of Globalization
Plastic waste has become an inescapable menace to the environmental well-being of our global society. The urban poor are habituated to the practices of linear disposal as there is a lack of government action, despite the overwhelming public outcry.
However, these asymmetrical processes of globalization have encouraged Ghanaians to form a global counter-movement of environmental adaptation by leveraging their status and operating within the informal sector to redefine their environment.
In the second half of this article, due to be published in late April, I will broaden the scope of this research to explore how Ghanaians are addressing the consequences of single-use plastics on both the political and communal spectrums.
Learning and Unlearning
In February of 2017, I traveled to Techiman, Ghana on a service trip to the Ayi-Owen International School. As a sophomore in high school, I was eager to gain meaningful experiences through teaching and learning abroad. But I also felt a deep apprehension toward an experience that would challenge my identity and show me for the first time what it meant to be an outsider.
My positionality as a middle-class, white woman living in the United States allows me immense socio-economic mobility. I grew up in a tiny town in Northeast Vermont, cluttered with the voices of other white people. In high school, I presumed Western aid organizations acted with altruism, and I, too, aspired to transform the world for the better.
I was acutely aware of the privileged space in which I existed, but I wasn’t yet equipped with the language to critique it.
I subconsciously consumed ideas that African countries needed aid, and Western societies possessed the most effective tools to facilitate development. Therefore, my whiteness and my U.S. citizenship symbolized an urgency to contribute my time and skills to others.
I was praised enthusiastically by my peers and teachers for my initiative to serve those deemed less fortunate. I felt validated; purposeful, even. I simply thought that Ghanaians were people in need of resources, and I was in a position to help.
While in Ghana I was struck by the environmental crisis of plastic pollution. The overlay of an incredibly grateful, communal atmosphere combined with the upset of plastic litter offered quite the juxtaposition.
For my senior capstone, I spent a semester researching the intricacies of the plastic industry and waste management in Ghana. In February 2019, I attended the same service trip through my high school, where I worked with the community in Techiman to investigate the social, environmental, and economic implications of plastic waste.
Those in the Global South are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. I viewed single-use plastics as an environmental problem, and I placed myself at the center of the solution.
Only this time, I felt a growing moral contradiction. I began to question whether my social philanthropy was predicated on racist depictions of young Ghanaians as lesser than me.
Was I using Western societies’ perception of African people as inferior to seek personal validation?
I knew deep down that my desire to return to Ghana was grounded in environmentalism and service work. Yet, I neglected to understand how my capstone research perpetuated notions of Western academic superiority, while I lacked an insider understanding of the long-term needs of the community.
I felt the unspoken power dynamic of white saviorism, and yet, it didn’t prevent me from serving. I felt an overwhelming sense of white guilt and individual agency. I believed I had a responsibility to undo these colonial power structures that manifested in modern globalization.
However, I did not realize that my presence alone perpetuated the internalization of these exact structures. As time went on, the words of my high school mentors no longer left me feeling proud or accomplished.
The longer I sat with this feeling, the more I was drawn to pursue an education in Global Studies at St. Lawrence University.
In the past two years, I have maintained my relationship with For One World and the Ayi-Owen school to develop sustainable, youth-led solutions to the climate crisis. I have continued to research the infrastructure of the plastics industry, and I hope to amplify the grassroots response in Ghana to plastic pollution.
