Rotary Club of Accra - Dzorwulu organizes Zero Waste campaign

The Rotary Club of Accra – Dzorwulu has undertaken a clean-up exercise at the Roman Ridge School and its environs, during which they cleared overgrown weeds and desilted drains.

The Project Director of the club, Mr Johnson Dweben said the exercise was in fulfilment of one of the club’s mandates, which was to keep the environment clean.

“We believe in water and sanitation and as one of our six core areas of focus, today we decided to start cleaning our environment from Roman Ridge because our first interact club is in Roman Ridge and we wanted to start with inculcating the sense of sanitation for our children to learn how to keep their environment clean,” he added.

Mr Dweben said the club collaborated with community members and Bolabird, a sanitation group that collects and segregates trash, to undertake the exercise.

“Today, not only are we cleaning our environment, but we are doing a community sensitisation project and also teaching the community how to segregate trash,” he said.

Mr Dweben explained that the different colour codes of the trash bags were for plastics, paper, metals and all other waste.

“We are encouraging all to keep the environment clean – Rotary believes in a clean environment, the community should also believe in a clean environment and together we will make our communities healthier,” he urged.

Other projects
Mr. Dweben said aside from the clean-up the club would provide a bus stop for commuters “so that when they see Rotary they would see that we are at their service and we would provide help to them including even offering a comfortable place to sit or to get on their bus.”

Also lined up is a blood donation drive which would be embarked on in partnership with Ashfoam Limited as well as other projects with sister clubs in the West Africa sub region.

The President of Rotary Club Accra – Dzorwulu, Mr Ato Kwamena, said the exercise which was part of a zero waste campaign, was undertaken as part of their responsibility to society.

“We believe that if we all join forces we will be able to kick waste out of our communities and have a clean and better Ghana. That is our aim, that is what Rotary does and that is what we believe in,” he stated.

“We are a service organisation and we believe that we need to give our time and resources to better the communities in which we live,” he said.

Waste profile
According to data gathered by Bolabird on the exercise, there were about 340.6 kg mix waste, 91 kg plastics, bringing total waste collected to 431.6 kg.

Sustainable waste management
The Managing Partner for Bolabird, Mr Richard Dablah, said the organization was a club-based initiative meant to improve access to sustainable waste management.

“What we do is we develop an application that works like Uber. The idea is to use the button of your smartphone to aid in picking up your waste, but we promote source segregation so we offer you a colour-coded liner or bin to segregate your food, plastics and any other waste that we send to various recycling facilities,” he said.

He was of the view that through their initiative they would be able to assist communities and the government’s plan of making Accra the cleanest city and going beyond that making Ghana sustainably green.