Allianz Ghana (Life & Non-Life Insurance) has organized a clean-up exercise along the Osu Alata Beach road as part of its corporate social responsibility dubbed ‘Allianz Creates through Waste’.

The campaign, which is aimed at getting rid of plastic waste along the beaches as well as encouraging recycling, has so far been organized in places such as the La Pleasure Beach and the Mighty Beach in Tema and other beaches in the regions.

The Chief Executive Officer of Allianz Life Insurance Company of Ghana Limited, Gideon Ataraire noted that: “Usually we speak with these coastal communities to partner them to clean their cities. We ask them what we need to do as a team to solve the problem because the plan is to create a sustainable way to curb the issue of plastics in the country. We discussed long term plans to sustain it including providing logistics for them.”

He noted that Allianz Ghana believes that this will go a long way to instill a cleanliness culture amongst Ghanaians to promote a plastic-free environment as well as contribute to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

He added that there will be monthly clean-ups in various places not limited to beaches alone with special emphasis on clearing the environment of plastic waste which can be recycled and repurposed.

In an interview with some of the fishermen in the community, they complained bitterly about the high rate of plastics they have been catching in their net as opposed to actual fish.

On his part, the Assembly Member of the OsuAlata community, Hubert Garshongnoted that the clean-up exercise is to help support the community and address sanitation issues whiles preparing for the Homowo festival.

“We met with Allianz Ghana about a month and a half ago based on a report they had published about pollution of our beaches with plastic bottles and this is one of the ways we want to help support the community with the overflow of these plastics into the sea,” said the Assembly Member.

Touching on a long-term planto sustain the work done, Mr. Garshong cited education and availability of waste equipment as a way of curbing the plastic menace.

He said together with the traditional council and the assembly, the community will be educated on segregating their rubbish. He said this will help in separating the plastic waste from the organic ones.

“Some other long-term plans we have thought about is to organize clean-up execise as often as possible. It could even be once every fortnight. We need to do everything possible to keep our beaches and communities clean,”added Mr. Garshong.

Allianz Creates Through Waste

The objective of the campaign which was launched earlier this year is to help curb the plastic menace plaguing the environment by helping recycle waste plastic into products that benefit the community.

In addition, the project also aims at educating communities on the impact of waste on the environment and livelihoods as well as the advantages of recycling.

In this regard, Allianz Ghana has begun to provide a number of bins for the collection of plastic waste at selected venues including beaches which will be picked up weekly and transported to Nelplast, a project partner that recycles plastic into pavement blocks.

These pavement blocks will be used to pave part of a project to be rolled out for the Abelenkpe 2 Basic School by Allianz Ghana. The school, which is located close to the company’s Dzorwulu head office, shares its field with the community and has no facilities for creative development, with the pupils having to play on the bare field.

Allianz Ghana is, therefore, building an environmentally-friendly creative centre for the school in collaboration with Mmofra Foundation, another project partner, using mostly recycled and re-purposed materials. Mmofra Foundation is a registered non-profit organization based in Ghana dedicated to enriching the cultural and intellectual lives of all children in Ghana.

The creative centre will be a play area that will be put together specifically for the pupils to enable them learn through play. The facelift which includes painting and tree planting will be done in collaboration with the Mmofra Foundation, to modify the look of the school and make it a more conducive environment for kids to learn and play.