As part of efforts to ensure the environment is clean and sound ahead of World Environmental Day celebration scheduled to take palace on Monday June 5, 2023, the entire working staff of Zoomlion Ghana Limited have cleaned some streets in Accra.
This year’s clean-up exercise was held at Kwame Nkrumah Circle where workers of the giant waste management company and that of the Klortey Korle Municipal Assembly engage residents and traders at circle on the need to keep the environment clean and cleaned the whole area.
The exercise which started around 7:00 am and lasted for two hours saw right from the top management of Zoomlion to the least holding brooms, shovels, rakes or wheelbarrows sweep the entire area.
The annual event by Zoomlion took place in various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies across the region.
Speaking to the media, the Chief Communication Officer of Jospong Group of Companies, Mrs. Sophia Kudjordji said getting rid of plastic waste from the system is a collective responsibility and all Ghanaians must get involve.
Mrs. Kudjordji said Zoomlion undertakes collection, transportation, treatment and now at the stage of recycling rubbish so plastics is an important component on the recycling stage and therefore called on all Ghanaians to get involve or gather the plastics and the company will come for it.
She described the clean-up exercise as successful because according to her, anytime a group of people come together to sweep the street it creates awareness and awaken the people’s mind and makes them conscious.
The Managing Director for Zoomlion Private Services, Mr. Edwin Amoakoh said the exercise was to create awareness about the need to clean the environment, how to dispose their waste and educate them on how waste can even change their lives.
Mr. Amoakoh said Nkrumah Circle is one of the densely populated areas in the city and therefore there is the need for traders and residents to regularly dispose their rubbish in the bins, separate plastic waste from solid and ensure that their surroundings are always clean and pure to avoid sickness.
Speaking on the theme; Beat Plastic Pollution,” the Director of Monitoring and Service Policy, Mr. Ernest Kusi said with the waste constituent, plastic is the second with waste streamline accounting for at least 13% of daily waste generated in the city and there is a huge value for it.
Mr. Kusi said with Zoomlion, waste is a resource because the group has a company that turns the plastic waste into waste bins and others for resuse.
“At Zoomlion, we see plastic as a valuable resource why allow it to be on our streets which doesn’t easily decompose so it is important, we don’t allow it to pollute our surroundings and the streets,” he stated.
He said Zoomlion started celebrating the World Environmental Day with tree planting exercise but as time goes on has review the strategy and now on a stage called ‘adopt a street’.
“This is where a group of people or even journalists can come together and adopt a street by ensuring that they clean and takes care of it at all the time,” he stated.
The Municipal Environmental Health Officer of the Klortey Korle Assembly, Mr. Victor Quaye said the clean-up is part of the activities to commemorate this year’s celebration adding that because human beings have failed to protect the environment so “we are not benefiting fully from it.”
He said any negative human activity against the environment has a rippling effect on the people “so it’s time we begin to treat it with respect to affect our lives positively.”
