Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited
Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL), the only total beverage business in Ghana, has called for broad cross-sector collaboration between government and stakeholders to establish a strong plastic value chain.
According to the industry giant, government policy and investment into the appropriate technology for the market would help deal with plastic waste.
Gabriel Opoku-Asare, Corporate Relations Director of GGBL, who was speaking at a three-day workshop by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said, “As a business that upholds the purpose of celebrating life, everyday everywhere, we continuously work to ensure our consumers get the best of our premium brands in convenient packaging.
“This also means ensuring that we follow strict guidelines on consumer health. We are guided by our 2020 Sustainability and Responsibility Targets, which is further divided into three thematic areas, the first being our leadership in creating a more positive role for alcohol.”
The issue of plastic waste falls under the 2nd thematic area of reducing the company’s environmental impact and building thriving communities.
“We consider what will happen to our packaging after use, right from our design process as we strive to create closed-loop cycles, hence our interest in working collaboratively for an end-to-end solution. Without this collaboration, not much can be achieved,” he said.
Marc Lepage, Innovation Adviser for UNDP Africa said, “Apart from the networking that we found important, we met with a diversity of people willing to apply a systematic approach to map out the value chain and the technologies available to deal with the plastic waste.
“The human-centered design approach also aided in collaborative work, which we hope to see become fruitful moving forward. This is enough inspiration and impetus to seek potential support from all stakeholders beyond this workshop.”
At the end of the workshop, initiatives toward a sustainable value chain for the plastic waste was agreed and action plans to move forward were discussed to facilitate a test model for increased collaboration between government, formal and informal sectors.