Zoomlion Company Ltd, one of the largest recycling companies in Ghana, has opened an ultramodern waste recycling and compost plant in Accra.

The US$20 million multi-purpose recycling plant is designed with the capacity to process plastics into pellets and discover other materials such as paper and electronic waste, among others, and turn them into raw material for industry.

The plant – Accra Waste Recovery Facility– has a 90 percent waste-recovery rate with the capacity to handle 800 metric tonnes of solid waste on a sixteen-hour shift; and an additional 200 tonnes of compost per day to support the agricultural and horticultural sectors.

It is reported that over 3000 tonnes of plastic wastes are generated in Ghana everyday—out of which less than 2 percent is recycled. And for about 250,000 tonnes of plastic waste generated in the country every year, 23 percent of it is expected to end up in the ocean.

It is also reported that 82 percent of the country’s plastic waste could be recovered and recycled with existing technologies into value-added products estimated at GH¢2 billion per year, creating about 5 million jobs across the economy.

If this problem remains unsolved, the country’s beautiful beach resorts will soon be flooded with plastic filth. Some of these beaches include the top five beaches we wrote about—Labadi beach, Ada Foah, the Royal Senchi resort, Busua beach resort, and Elmina beach.

It is for this reason that the Jospong Group of Companies, the parent company of Zoomlion Ltd, wants to take advantage of the situation and help address the plastic menace problem in Ghana.

One other company that is protecting the environment in its own little way is KOALA Shopping Mall located at Airport City near GreenViews. The supermarket has placed a blue container at its car park where people can dump plastic waste which is collected on regular basis and later recycled.