In a bid to address the plastic pollution crisis in Kwara state a Non-Governmental Organisation, Green Globe Initiative (GGI) has engaged environment stakeholders on the need for plastic policy in the state.
GGI Executive Director, Mr Akintola Akinyemi while speaking at the event held at Kwara state ministry of environment said the discussion was in order to build a future of sustainable ecosystem in Kwara.
He revealed that the collective contributions and insights of each person were crucial to developing a document that would help the State Government formulate and adopt plastic policy tools.
”The policy will be in a bid to regulate production, trade, transportation and utilisation of single use plastic in the State so as to safeguard our ecology and posterity.
”We are not here to stop businesses, rather, we want to help businesses in the plastic value chain in the state to have an improved business environment and opportunities in the circular economy system in Kwara,” he said.
The GGI boss said the mindset attached to the climate change phenomenon makes it look less personal.
”But plastic pollution crises, flooding, and associated loss and damages absolutely impair our lives personally and collectively as a state.
”Therefore, strategic steps to protect, restore, and conserve life on land and life below water is the only blueprint to our survival and sustainability in the Kwara State Environment,” Mr Akinyemi said.
In his Paper Presentation, Dr Lawal Olohungbebe, the Senior Special Adviser to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq on Community Engagement urged the government to involve all stakeholders in the policy formulation.
Dr Olohungbebe who spoke through Mr Abdulrasheed Adio said five major stakeholders among others should be carried along in the plastic policy formulation.
He named them as the Academia, Government and regulatory bodies, manufacturers, traders and distributors as well as recyclers and scavengers.
The SSA called for collaboration and commitment of all the stakeholders to ensure the implementation and enforcement if the policies when enacted.
Another paper presenter, Mr Musa Aliu, Chairman, of the Health Promotion and Advocacy Agency, called for a National Policy on Plastic Waste Management which should be a working one from the federal to the local level.
Mr Aliu also called for education on plastic pollution from the elementary stages in schools to catch them young and the engagement of communities in terms of advocacy and sensitisation.
The Director of Environment, State Ministry of Environment, Mr Abayomi Idowu, said plastic pollution has been a crisis in the environment and promised that the state government would implement recommendations arrived at by discussants.
At the panel session of the engagement, the panelists in their different submissions agreed that everyone needed to be on the same page to identify plastic pollution as a crisis and stand up to fight the menace.
They said all the stakeholders should collaborate to ensure the localisation of the National Policy against the single use of plastics and effective management of plastic wastes.
By Bushrah Yusuf-Badmus
