Environmental sustainability and waste management expert at the University of Education,Winneba, Dr Florence Esi Nyieku has called for greater investment in sanitation to help turn plastic waste into useful products and create employment opportunities.
Speaking on Globe TV’s News Lens on Monday, November 2, 2026, Dr Nyieku said waste management should be seen not only as an environmental responsibility but also as an opportunity to build businesses, particularly for young people.
“We create employment any time we look for solutions to our problems,” she said. “Once you begin to give attention to our sanitation sector, you realise that we are creating job opportunities.”
Dr Nyieku explained that while decomposers break down food leftovers and return nutrients to the environment, plastics persist, posing a waste management challenge.
She said converting discarded plastics into useful products, including blocks, was one way to address the problem while creating economic opportunities.
“For me, I believe strongly that if we channel most of our resources and our energies into sanitation as a country, we can create a lot of jobs,” she said.
She argued that the sanitation sector had received insufficient attention, leaving opportunities for employment and business development untapped.
Recounting an experience during a waste research exercise in the halls of residence, Dr Nyieku said her team collected and sorted waste from residents’ homes but struggled to find buyers for the recovered plastics in Winneba.
“I was just looking for a buyer for the plastic components in Winneba. I searched, searched, searched, and I couldn’t get one,” she said. She expressed frustration that, without buyers, materials recovered through sorting could still end up at a disposal site.
Dr Nyieku said the experience highlighted a gap that entrepreneurs could fill by connecting waste collectors and sorters with processors and manufacturers.
She explained that businesses could purchase recovered plastics and supply them to processors to be converted into plastic chips for the manufacture of chairs and other products.
Dr Nyieku called for greater emphasis on entrepreneurship in the water and sanitation sector, saying efforts to solve waste management problems could also provide livelihoods.
She stressed that giving the sector greater attention could help translate existing environmental challenges into business opportunities.
“For us in environmental health and sanitation, one of the key things that we have been talking about is entrepreneurship — building businesses in the water and sanitation sector,” she said.
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