St Augustine's College in the Central Region has emerged winner of this year's STEM Plastic Waste Management Challenge for the Southern Belt, polling 77 per cent to beat six other Catholic senior high schools in a contest aimed at tackling the country’s growing plastic waste crisis.

The Archbishop Porter Girls' School in the Western Region placed second with 62 per cent, while the St Thomas Aquinas SHS in the Greater Accra Region took third with 53.3 per cent.

The competition, which was held last Friday, brought together the St Augustine's College, the Bishop Herman College (Volta Region), the Archbishop Porter Girls, the Holy Child Girls' SHS (Central Region), the St Gregory SHS (Central Region), the Fr Dogli Memorial Technical (Oti Region) and the St Thomas Aquinas, who presented innovative projects on managing plastic waste.

The challenge is a partnership between the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and the Catholic Education Unit under the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference and is now in its third consecutive year.

Strategy

Speaking at the event, the KAS Country Director Anna Lena Sabroso-Wasserfall said the choice to work with Catholic schools stemmed from a deliberate strategy to reach young people early.

She stated that engaging students when they were young made it easier for them to absorb and later apply values related to waste management, adding that projects presented over the years had shown increasing innovation.

She said the standard of entries had shifted markedly since the competition began.

She explained that earlier editions of the contest featured more craft-based projects such as bricks and furniture made from waste, but recent years have seen entries lean more heavily into STEM-driven, technological solutions.

Sabroso-Wasserfall said KAS, marking 60 years of presence in Ghana this year, valued its long-standing cooperation with Catholic institutions, including the Catholic Education Unit, and would continue to support similar projects in the future, even if the format varies.

Status

The General Manager of Catholic Schools, Francis Batadjon, cited data from Green Advocacy Ghana showing the country generates about 1.1 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, with only around five per cent recycled.

He said 85 per cent of plastic waste was improperly disposed of, with an estimated 250,000 metric tonnes ending up in the Atlantic Ocean, threatening marine life.

Mr Batadjon linked indiscriminate plastic disposal to recent flooding in parts of the country, saying blocked drains caused by plastic waste often force water to find alternative paths, resulting in floods.

He commended President John Dramani Mahama for declaring July 10 and 11 as national cleaning exercise days, describing the directive as timely.

He said the Catholic Education Unit's involvement in the challenge aligned with Pope Francis's second encyclical, "Laudato Si", which calls on humanity to care for the environment.

He also urged the students of the winning school to become advocates for plastic waste management in their communities beyond the competition.