She said drastic steps were needed to ensure effective disposal of plastic waste and to promote clean and healthy environments.

"We must gradually change our mindset and that of our children for them to understand that plastics do not have to find themselves in gutters, the sea, littered around our communities, but must be segregated, collected, sold and go back into the system for recycling."

Mrs Ahiadome made this observation at the seventh edition of the Community Buy-Back programme, a post-consumer waste recovery programme by Voltic (GH) Limited (Voltic) and Coliba Recycling Services, and UNDP at Glefe Dansoman, Accra.

She said the buy-back programme, which started on June 5, to commemorate the World Environment day was to bring home the effects of indiscriminate disposal of waste and to educate and demonstrate the value of post-consumer plastics every month within Coastal communities.

She said the programme was also to enlighten the public on the negative impacts of littering, while equally changing the mindsets of consumers to see the worth in waste through the buying back of the plastics from them.

She said the programme was a pilot one to see how best to recover enough materials from the selected areas and give opportunity to members of the community to make some money by buying their collected plastic waste.

She noted that since the commencement of the programme, it had collected over eight tonnes of plastics, which was going back into the ecosystem for recycling.

"Even as we design better packaging, Voltic will continue to build partnerships to enable us to achieve the 2030 World without Waste ambition of The Coca-Cola Company of which, Voltic is part of."

Voltic has, over the past 3 years engaged various stakeholders to create an ecosystem that drive collective sustainable action towards collecting and recycling a bottle for every one sold by 2030.

Mrs Ahiadome said they were also in the process of establishing permanent buy-back centres in the selected coastal communities, where each day about five kilogrammes of plastic waste would be collected, hoping that gradually they would achieve their ambition.

She expressed the hope that gradually, there would be some change of attitude towards waste in the communities that they visited so far and encouraged all to be environmentally conscious, think of where plastics end once they were consumed and be part of the journey.

Mr Prince Agbata, Chief Executive Officer, Coliba Recycling Service expressed satisfaction about the impact of the programme so far, saying "we are helping to create awareness on economic and environmental value of plastics. It is no more waste but a resource."

He said the programme was a monthly volunteering programme, organised every third Saturday of the month, and they were responsible for the collection of the plastics recovered.

Mr Agbata said next year they would look up to making the programme much better because by establishing the permanent centres so that communities could have access to them any time.

"If people can find value for their waste they would not litter them around, they would collect and segregate them, for cash."