Joselyn Dumas
Actress Joselyn Dumas has added her voice to the rate at which plastic waste is polluting Ghana’s environment and called for a possible ban on the use of plastic bags.
“We take plastic bags for everything, even the very minor items. Our lands and seas are choking with plastic waste. Refuse, plastic bags. Go shopping with your jute bags/baskets. Let’s push for the general use of paper bags in Ghana & Africa. We love Africa, we love the world, doesn’t mean anything if it’s drowning in waste,” she said in an Instagram post after attending US Embassy’s programme on plastic waste pollution last week.
It was estimated that if the menace of plastic waste is not checked, the sea is likely to be filled with more plastic than fishes by the year 2050.
Joselyn Dumas, who was one of Ghana’s showbiz personalities who spoke at the ceremony, explained that the use of paper bags would help solve the current plastic bag pollution situation in the country.
“We must begin by educating the entire populace, formally and informally on sustainable waste practices. In our school curriculums and in our learning materials, we must teach the 3Rs of the environment? reduce, reuse and recycle? and then we must teach our students to practise what they preach. In our market spaces and towns, we must ensure that intensive popular education is carried out in local languages so that every citizen is fully equipped to contribute to a better Ghana/ Africa. We must adopt newer, environmentally friendlier lifestyles like shopping with paper bags, using paper straws instead of plastic straws and encouraging supermarkets and local shops to only use paper bags,” she stated.
“When we have educated the populace, we must strive to provide them with available resources to practise the education that they have received. We must remember that this is not merely a fight against climate change or plastic pollution, we are fighting for our lives and for our future, and we all have a very important part to play,” Joselyn concluded.
By Francis Addo