Trash to Treasure

 

Hello Readers! 

 

My name is Jordan Biver and I am a junior studying Accounting and Sustainability. We have exactly one week left here in Ghana, and the time is flying by unbelievably fast! I am excited to share with you some of our activities and insights from today. We learned a lot today including what types of business leaders we strive to be and the types of leaders we want to avoid becoming.

 

Site Visit #1 this morning was a meeting with the founder and CEO of Heritor’s Lab, Derrydean Dadzie. Heritor’s Lab is a software and tech consulting company that is based in Ghana but works on projects worldwide. Derrydean’s inspiration for creating this company in 2020 was to build a viable and innovative economy in Ghana. The group had a little laugh when the founder compared himself to Steve Jobs, but overall there were some overarching positive takeaways from our conversation. For example, Derrydean shared some advice that is very universal in entrepreneurship such as knowing when you need to ditch an idea, choosing to pursue opportunities that align with your mission and values, and building a strong network. 

Site Visit #2 brought us to East Legon Hills where we met with Mayor from Mayor’s Properties, an up and coming real estate development company. Mayor’s Properties focuses on providing reasonable priced homes for the middle to upper class. During our meeting I was surprised to learn that mortgages are not very popular in Ghana. Instead, private developers like Mayor develop 1-3 year payment plans for customers when they purchase homes. It struck us as a bit contradictory when the company’s mission is described as providing affordable housing options to Ghanaians while the houses shown were luxury designs sold mostly to foreigners. Still, it was fascinating to get a glimpse of the real estate industry here in Ghana, and after seeing both finished and in process projects, you can’t argue that Mayor’s Properties is very successful at what they do!

After a delicious rooftop lunch at Manny’s Sky Lounge we hopped back on the bus for Site Visit #3 of the day, Trashy Bags! This was my personal favorite stop of the day, and maybe even the whole trip! Trashy Bags is a local nonprofit that repurposes plastic water sachets (bags) into new products! In addition to the water sachets, they also collect discarded billboards and fabric waste that would otherwise contribute to pollution. On average, they repurpose 250,000 plastic sachets a month, which is about 12 of these large “santa” sacks of bags!

One of the overarching issues that Ghanaians have expressed is unemployment. Trashy Bags is doing their part to counteract this issue by offering 2 cedi per kilo of plastic sachets that people collect and bring in. Our helpful guide, Elvis, explained that some people even use it as their full time job! Cleaning up the streets and community while making money at the same time sounds like a perfect combination to me! Once the sachets have gone through a multi-step cleaning process, they are sewn together to create larger sheets of plastic, similar to quilting.

They are then combined with fabric scraps for designs and billboard pieces for reinforcement to create the beautiful - and sustainable - products that they sell. Our group just about cleared out their showroom with all of our shopping! 

This company really struck home for me because it combines so many things. I am passionate about sustainability (so much so that I am studying it in school). I love to sew and have explored up-cycling and sustainable fashion. Also, it is impactful to see that the plastic waste we have contributed to during our time here will go on to live a whole new life after we are gone!

We ended the night with a Zoom call to our GHR Fellows back home. The conversation was a great place for reflection on what we have learned, experienced, and how we have grown in such a short time. 

 

Good luck with the cold weather, I am thoroughly enjoying the sun!!

 

Maadwo (good evening!)

Jordan

Hello friends, family, and readers!  

 

My name is Lydia Egbers, and I am a sophomore completing my business 200 (BUSN 200) course here in Ghana. 

Today, our BUSN 200 students travelled an hour and a half by Uber to our site, the Green African Youth Organization (GAYO) materials recovery facility (MRF) in Accra. Plastic waste is collected at this site and GAYO works to sort through the plastic water bottles. They also just began a project to create composted soil right on this site. Community members bring their plastic water bottles to the GAYO MRF site and deposit them in a metal cage after use. The organization also has workers driving on motorcycles with trailers tasked with going out into the community to collect organic waste and water bottles. GAYO diligently works towards considering their workers and community. During our tour, we noticed that mostly women occupied the working stations in the facility. GAYO recognizes that women have a much harder time finding jobs and give priority to them when assigning the sorting jobs where they can sit and work.

After our tour, we were given personal protective equipment and put straight to work! We began taking the labels and caps off water bottles which were next sorted into color categories. This is significant because plastic bottles that are clear can be sold to recycling facilities that can change the shade of the plastic to be used for their intended purpose. Colored plastic bottles, can also be sold, but because they are already stained, the pigment of the plastic cannot be changed. We learned that on average, this facility collects 10 tons of plastic from the community every month. We were amazed by how quickly the women working were able to sort through the large circular bags of plastic bottles. Two of the women told us that they can accomplish 3-4 large bags a day. 

Once we completed sorting through the plastic, we enjoyed a nice lunch of fufu and banku. After lunch, the students and staff rode on one of the trailers pulled by a motorcycle to go into the nearby community. There we got a firsthand experience of how organic waste is disposed of and collected by GAYO. We worked collectively to carry and lift the waste onto the trailer. Upon returning to the MRF after collecting the waste, we walked through the process of creating composted soil. This was based off the organic material collected such as saw dust, plantains, yams and chicken droppings. We began with weighing each of the different components, dumped them into a pile on the concrete floor, and began turning the soil. While turning the soil, it was important to continually add water to the mix to receive the desired consistency of the soil. Once we completed this process we worked together as a group to shovel, load the wagon, and dump the soil into one of the on-site organic bins. These bins are a new project GAYO is working on to create composted soil to give to farmers for free.

I am so grateful to have been a part of this volunteering experience. Working alongside the informal waste workers and learning more about GAYO’s processes toward reaching their goal has been fascinating. I believe I have a better understanding of how much work and effort goes into their sustainability projects and I’m very excited to go back tomorrow.  

Thank you all for reading and learning about our experience with GAYO! 

 

Lydia Egbers