Introduction
We live in the ‘plastic age’ (Moore 2008). Unlike the 1940s when, after the Second World War, plastics were for the first time becoming a part of human society, the human environment is now characterised by plastics (Griffith 2010). The amount of plastic waste generated has also increased considerably. In turn, plastic waste has gained considerable attention among academics, policy-makers and civil society organisations. According to Astrup (2011), the advent of climate change has further increased the interest in plastic waste. Yet, there are huge gaps in the state of knowledge about causes of the explosion in plastic waste. The existing research focuses on how best it can be managed (e.g., Chan, Sinha and Wang 2011), and tends to take for granted causes, especially those linked to underlying economic systems. The provision of technical solutions and analysis (e.g., Tsuchida et al. 2011) by scientists dominate discussions of plastic waste and the tendency is to leave political economic concerns aside. In the words of Navia and Heipieper (2011, 564):
Waste Management & Research serves as a forum for exchanging research expertise and scientific ideas supporting the development and application of novel biotechnological processes used in industrial waste management. In doing so, Waste Management & Research will particularly focus on biotechnological processes with lower energy demand, increased performance and shorter processing times with simultaneous achievement of the quality standards needed for final waste management.
Concentrating on management is important, but because of the importance of diagnosis to every effective treatment programme, the drivers of the plastic waste pandemic cannot be shoved aside. This study revisits the research on the causes of and solutions to the problem of plastic waste. It extends the literature by putting ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ back into plastic waste management research, and adds to the limited number of studies using this approach mainly in the context of the so-called ‘disposable cities’ (Myers 2005) in Eastern and Southern Africa (see, for example, Nchito and Myers 2004; Njeru 2006).
The study transcends this geographical focus to consider the situation in West Africa. The particular country that is examined is Ghana, where the plastic waste problem has become a prominent national concern.1
The Briefing first looks at causes, before presenting a political economic analysis of existing posited solutions. It argues that the plastic waste pandemic is driven primarily by systemic forces and finds that, while several recommendations have been made to ameliorate the situation, none is likely to be successful without directly confronting the structural contradictions in neoliberal programmes for governing the cities in the country.
Nature of the problem: causes and effects
It is estimated that 250 tonnes of plastic waste is produced on a daily basis in Ghana (Oil City Magazine 2012). Most of this is generated in the cities, prompting the national Daily Graphic newspaper to note in its editorial that cities in Ghana are engulfed in plastics (Daily Graphic 2013). In the Greater Accra Metropolis, plastic waste constituted about 20% of waste in the 1990s (Oteng-Ababio 2010). In the Kumasi Metropolis, plastic constituted 3.5% of total waste in 2009 (Maolidi 2010). While a comparable figure for Sekondi-Takoradi is not readily available, one private collector/agent is able to gather more than four to five tonnes of plastics per week.2
The plastic waste pandemic is closely related to the general sanitation crisis in the cities. The national newspapers are awash with the issue of waste, with headlines such as ‘heaps of refuse litter K'si [Kumasi] metropolis’ (Daily Graphic 2013, 20) and ‘Ghanaians urged to change approach to waste disposal’ (Akpalu and Kyei 2013, 3). Media articles and commentaries from city governments themselves aside, scholarly papers have also identified the problem as a major threat to the environment (see, for example, Stoler 2012a, 2012b; Stoler, Weeks and Fink 2012).
There is a huge body of literature on the negative environmental and social problems related to poor plastic waste management in Ghana. Most studies argue that it constitutes grounds for public health concerns (e.g., Boadi and Kuitunen 2003; Anomanyo 2004; Weinaah 2007), such as polluting river bodies and other sources of drinking water (e.g., Tsiboe and Marbell 2004). The plastic containers – made from ethylene gas by distilling crude oil to produce high or low density polythene (Okioga 2007, 38) – may produce dioxin, a highly poisonous cancer causing chemical (especially when items are subjected to heat; see Buekens and Huang 1998), may be washed into the ocean and endanger marine life, and may cause aesthetic problems (Moore 2008). The plastic containers of water, be they bottles or sachets, are typically non-biodegradable, so they stay in the environment for a long time, and, inter alia, serve as breeding places for malarial mosquitoes and contribute to the cholera menace in the country. Indeed, it has recently been reported that the Disease Surveillance Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) found that, in March 2011 only, there were a total of 1396 cholera cases in the Greater Accra, Eastern and Central regions of Ghana (Anaman 2011). The diseases that accompany poor waste management cost the country over US$500 million dollars to treat, according to the director of the Institute of Waste and Sanitation at the University of Ghana (Akpalu and Kyei 2013, 3). Some raise concerns about the conditions under which low-income employees of waste management companies work (e.g., Post and Obirih-Opareh 2003), while others still (e.g., Addo-Yobo and Ali 2003; Agyei-Mensah and Owusu 2009) show that the environmental and social problems arising from poor waste management are disproportionately distributed across different income groups.
For all these reasons, earlier studies have tried to ascertain the causes of the problem. To date, most studies blame urbanisation, weak institutional capacity of the city authorities (e.g., Boadi and Kuitunen 2003; Weinaah 2007; Amoah 2010) and inefficiencies in the operation of waste management contractors (e.g., Post and Obirih-Opareh 2003; Osumanu 2008). Those claims feed into a general perception that cities are the problem. ‘More people, more cities, more problems’ seems to be an enticing framing of the causes of the plastic waste problem, as is blaming the attitude of urban residents for the problem. A recognised expert, the director of the Institute of Environment and Sanitation, has noted that ‘until Ghanaians change their attitude towards the indiscriminate disposal of waste, the fight against the canker will remain a mirage’ (Akpalu and Kyei 2013, 3). According to the Mayor of Accra, ‘culture’ – or a set of attitudes – is at the root of the problem (Daily Graphic 2013). Recently, the chief director of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development is reported to have said, ‘solving the problem of poor sanitary conditions begins with us. It is highly an attitudinal issue’ (The Ghanaian Times 2013, online).
This way of framing the plastic explosion problematic ignores systemic dynamics of capitalism as a mode of production, and places total emphasis on form rather than substance, or, to use Alonso's (1971) famous distinction, emphasises problems of cities, not problems in cities. Yet, Yeboah (2000) has shown how urban form in Ghana co-evolves with the underlying economic system. Yeboah used the notion of deregulation and the processes of structural adjustment to demonstrate these structural links, but stopped short of exploring the plastic explosion problem.
It is worth extending the work of Yeboah (2000) in this direction. The privatisation of water in Ghana is a useful case study because of its roots in the neoliberal economic paradigm. There is empirical evidence (Obeng-Odoom 2011, 2012a) that it led to the expansion of the plastic waste industry because poor people, who need to supplement their inadequate and sometimes contaminated supplies of water, have become dependent on packaged water. In turn, more economically comfortable people have cashed in on the situation by going into the business of producing sachet water. According to the Ghana Food and Drugs Board (2011), which is mandated to license packaged water producers, there are over 380 licensed packaged water producers in Ghana, and a further 300 unlicensed producers in the country (Addo et al. 2009).
One survey in Tamale (Okioga 2007) revealed that private packaged water producers sold an average of 15,000 packaged water sachets per day. Between 2003 and 2008, there was an increase of more than 439% in the number of residents in Accra depending on sachet water (Stoler 2012b). Merely becoming dependent on packaged water does not imply littering, of course. However, there is a tendency to do so. Twenty per cent of people who purchased packaged water in the Tamale survey always littered the environment with the empty sachets, while another 20% sometimes littered.
An easy target for criticism has been city authorities, particularly because they do not make sufficient numbers of refuse bins available. Note, however, that the inability of city authorities to perform optimally also has structural roots. Neoliberalism dictated that central governments should offload their responsibilities to urban authorities which were often ill equipped to do this job (Yeboah and Obeng-Odoom 2010). Yet pressure from the world development bodies, inter alia, has been expressed in the form of tied aid, and in the zeal of compliant public officers enchanted by the neoliberal case for economic efficiency. The presence of opportunistic politicians, seeking to bureaucratically control local populations, also led to the decentralisation of the public health and sanitation role to the local/urban state, which was not ready for the job (Crook 1994; Oquaye 1995). In turn, even the provision of basic refuse bins was a major challenge for the city authorities.
Solutions
The three key recommendations often offered as a panacea to the plastic waste problematic are the subcontracting of municipal functions to plastic waste management companies; the introduction of a plastic bag tax; and the strengthening of regulation. These solutions are discussed in turn.
Successive governments have passed on their responsibility for managing urban waste to private waste management companies, which have consistently widened their scope. Between 1998 and 2008, the private sector increased its share of the total waste it collects in Accra from 20% to 40% (Tsiboe and Marbell 2004; Anton 2008; Owusu 2010).
The private sector has been widely touted as being more efficient than the public sector (Hutchful 1995). Indeed, there is evidence of a massive contribution by the private sector to economic expansion (Obeng-Odoom 2012b). Furthermore, plastic producers in Ghana, for example, provide employment to 147,410 people and generate a tax revenue of 59.57 million new Ghana cedis (GH
) (Ghana News Agency 2010). It is likely that the contribution of the private waste management sector to job creation has increased over time. For example, a new entity in Accra, Trashy Bags, uses plastic waste to make bags for sale, recycles some 180,000 sachets per month, and employs some 60 people in just one office in Accra (Oil City Magazine
2012). In addition to employing in-house, recycling companies create jobs for collectors, who are paid around GH6.00 for every 1000 empty sachets collected.3 Collectors can make about GH30.00 a day (Sambou 2013). So, it may be argued that the private sector is actually ‘helping’.
However, the environmental practices of the private companies in charge of waste collection, particularly regarding how they transport and dispose of collected waste, raise several questions. For example, the 17 waste companies in Accra, including Zoomlion Co. Ltd, Meskworld, Stanley Owusu and Asadu Royal Waste, rarely sort waste into different categories. Thus, glass, rubber and batteries are all lumped together. Further, the waste is simply buried in the ground and not specifically subject to special treatment (Owusu 2010). In turn, people living close to landfills are put at great health risks and inconvenience such as the psychosocial stress involved in living close to a landfill, and waste dropped from the trucks before reaching the landfill, leading to many demonstrations against the city authorities (Owusu, Oteng-Ababio, and Afutu-Kotey 2011). For the majority of low-income areas, the activities of the private sector present a ‘double whammy’, because, in addition to noxious gases and infestation with flies from the dumpsite, the waste in local residents' own homes is not usually collected (Post and Obirih-Opareh 2003).
Finally, most private waste management companies in Ghana do not provide regular health checks for their workers; they supply little or no protective clothing, and use vehicles which cause further damage to the environment (Amoah 2010; Oteng-Ababio 2010). Both big recycling companies and intermediary plastics-purchasing agents do not seem to care a hoot about their pickers, most of whom are as old as 54 to 65, and who work without gloves, masks or other forms of protection. In fairness, some of the intermediaries do have gloves, but not usually masks – and they do not always wear their gloves (Sambou 2013; interview with purchasing agent, 24 January 2013).
Therefore, on balance, this solution to the plastic menace is not as effective as claimed. Indeed, it creates further complications. Thus, it is questionable whether the recyclers who purchase plastic sachets from collectors are, on the whole, supporting labour and job creation or encouraging a dangerous lifestyle. Thus, the claim that the private sector is efficient is not entirely accurate, as the so-called economic gains are obtained at great social and environmental cost.
Some environmentalists (see, for example, Ghananation 2010; cf. Ankrah and Osei 2010) and media outlets (e.g., Daily Graphic 2013) have instead proposed or suggested the use of taxation to internalise so-called externalities in the production of packaged water. Placing a tax on water would increase the cost of production, which, in turn, would be passed on to consumers. The dislike for higher prices would force consumers to purchase less packaged water and hence reduce the amount of plastic waste. With a reduction in demand, private producers are expected to dramatically reduce the quantity of sachet water produced.
While this ‘Pigovian logic’ can be said to be fair because it forces people who pollute to pay for the cost they impose on others (Twomey 2010), a tax on water may mean that water production is the business of only the very rich companies. Given that water faces inelastic demand, taxing it would only mean that consumers would buy nearly the same or similar quantities. In turn, a monopoly market might be created where only few companies produce water on a for-profit basis. As argued in a different context by Stilwell (2010), advocates may contend that, in the Ghanaian case, the proposal is to have an ad valorem tax, which implies that the incidence of tax may differ between the rich and the poor, such that the rich who buy more expensive bottled water (see Stoler, Weeks, and Fink 2012) would pay more money in taxes. However, imposing a tax on water packages leaves the root cause of the problem intact. Why is packaged water being produced in large quantities? Neoliberalism is a major driver, but policy-makers continue to hold it in high esteem, although it has fallen short of the expectations of citizens, the public regulator, and even some members of private entities (Obeng-Odoom 2011).
Finally, others contend that the solution to the plastic explosion problem is enacting more laws and enforcing existing ones. Indeed, it has been reported (Bokpe 2013; Darko 2013) that the city authorities in Accra have enacted a by-law4 that makes it a crime for pedestrians to buy from people hawking goods, including water, in areas not designated for such activities. Also, three sanitation courts have been set up in Ablekuma Central, Okaikoi North and La Dadekotopon. A fourth will soon be stabled at Osu Klotey. Sanitation courts help in expediting the implementation of existing by-laws that govern urban life in the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. For instance, as of the end of June 2011, the courts were seeking to enforce by-laws in 2190 cases (Darko 2013).
Cast in terms of neoclassical economic theories, the state has failed to correct a market failure, and more regulation will solve the problem. However, this view is rejected by the regulation school of political economy. It argues that it is misleading to separate the state from the economy and claim that the former can guide or ‘regulate’ the latter to achieve predetermined ends. It is more appropriate, regulationists argue, that the state be regarded as regulator and regulated, simultaneously a subject and an object of regulation (Jessop 1997). The neoclassical view of the state ignores the crisis inherent in regulation and fails to capture the dynamic that ‘too much’ regulation – including insisting that the private sector conduct its business in strict compliance with existing laws and reducing the demand for sachet water by prosecuting buyers – is anathema for private sector growth, and inconsistent with the much-touted vision of making the private sector the engine of economic expansion in Ghana. Thus, neither the establishment of waste management firms, nor the implementation of tax, nor the ever more rigid application of law can sufficiently address the plastic explosion problem. It is fundamentally difficult to reconcile the contradictory attempt to use packaged water for profit, life and sustainable development.
A more progressive approach is needed to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic waste (Griffith 2010). State provision of water can reduce the tendency to create so much waste, as people may not need to supplement their daily water needs with bottled or sachet water. In addition, the state can intervene in waste collection, sorting and recycling. Finally, the state might go into the construction and management of recycling plants.
It can be argued that the state is unwilling to play this role, given that it would want to please so-called ‘development partners’ whose stock-in-trade is to dispense more and more neoliberal pills as part of their effort to promote ‘good urban governance’. However, were the state so minded, it would derive considerable benefit. According to the Centre for Scientific and Industry Research, the Ghanaian state may obtain GH1,200,0005 per month from recycling plastic waste (Markwei 2010). There is also some evidence that the state may be able to derive energy from plastic waste. Wikner (2009) finds that, in Kumasi alone, there is the potential to generate between 24,800 and 191,000 MWh/year. In the light of frequent power outages and growth in electricity demand vis-à-vis low supply (Wolf, Fuest, and Asante 2007), reclaiming water and waste services is an option whose feasibility is worth exploring.
Minutes of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on 13 July 2009 give a glimmer of hope. The AMA mayor seems to be persuaded of the feasibility of projects to convert waste to energy. He said that such a project would ‘make Accra a clean city with healthy environmental [sic]’, provide ‘job opportunity to the people’, and generate a substantial amount of energy: ‘60,000 tonnes of Solid Waste delivered annually would generate 50 MW of electricity for sale and delivering to the national grid.’ Finally, he noted that ‘Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) would derive substantial revenue from the venture’ (AMA 2009, sections 5.0 and 5.1).6
Conclusion
This Briefing shows how misleading is the claim that urbanisation, attitudes, institutional lapses and culture per se are to blame for the plastic waste pandemic. It demonstrates that, while these factors may be important in showing the form in which the problem of plastic explosion is experienced, it is the inherent contradictions in neoliberal policies that lie at the root of the problem. On the one hand, the private sector seems to solve the specific problem with which it is tasked. On the other hand, it generates other costs that the market is ill suited to resolve. Dependent on private sector activity for a vibrant economy, the state is caught between doing the bidding of capital or risking a downturn in the economy. So, the plastic waste problem is a case of both markets for plastics and plastics for markets.
The solution does not lie with state intervention, for it was through that medium that the privatisation of water and waste management came about. Rather, the remedy lies with the direction of state intervention. A willing state, seeking to end the environmental hazard plaguing cities, would need to discontinue its dependence on private capital and take charge of the provision of water, waste and, hence, the environment. That change in track entails monumental risks, including the possibility of state and government failure. However, the prospects – adequate water supply, clean environment and energy – are good enough to give this option a try. This is what Gramsci meant when he talked about ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ (cited in Bello 2008, 15).
Note on contributor
Franklin Obeng-Odoom is the Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of the Built Environment, University of Technology, Sydney in Australia. He is the author of Governance for Pro-Poor Urban Development: Lessons from Ghana (Routledge 2013) and a recipient of the maiden World Social Science Fellowship awarded by the International Social Science Council. His research interests and other information can be found on his personal website at http://obeng-odoom.com