The 15th Biennial Workshop : Efficient Waste and Sanitation Management for sustainable Development: The Role of Science, Technology and Innovation
The 15th Biennial Workshop of the Ghana Science Association will be held in collaboration with stakeholders on Wednesday, 3rd August 2016.
The theme for the workshop is
“Efficient Waste and Sanitation Management for sustainable Development: The Role
of Science, Technology and Innovation”
Background
Without doubt, one of the greatest and overarching challenges in Ghana has been the issue of effective and sustainable waste and sanitation management. Population increase coupled with rapid urbanization, increasing costs and limited resources renders the effective management of the situation a daunting task. Poor environmental sanitation includes the contamination of water bodies – leading to the spread of water-borne diseases, health hazards, stench emanating from the uncollected and decaying garbage, air contamination, choked drains and gutters, the plastic waste menace, and the irresponsible disposal of refuse in communities.
Poor waste and sanitation management have been attributed mainly to inadequate waste management inputs, lack of skilled waste management personnel, unclear definition of roles and responsibilities of key actors and relevant stakeholders and absence of enforceable regulation on environmental sanitation, lack of appropriate dumping/landfill sites, negative attitude and perception of the populace towards waste and environment sanitation, overreliance on the collection-haulage-dumping practice, low interest in waste technology and application,
In an attempt to augment government’s effort to solve the sanitation problems, some private sector entities like Zoomlion Ghana Limited had entered the fray with several technologies and systems. Notwithstanding these strategies, the realization has been that waste and sanitation management issues are daunting, multifaceted and diverse. This calls for the adoption of international best practices and more sustainable waste and sanitation management systems such as waste reduction, separation, reuse, recycling and treatment. It is therefore recommended that due support and attention is paid to stakeholders especially service providers in the sector to leverage strategies geared towards the injection of greater efficiency in service delivery.
The Ghana Science Association (GSA), therefore, intends to lead the way by creating a platform for the exchange of ideas to arrive at practical solutions for the effective and efficient management of waste and sanitation. Further business aspects of waste management would also be explored. There is no gainsaying the fact that a lot of support is needed in this direction from Government, NGOs and all stakeholders to achieve this urgent and laudable goal.