Cleanliness: A Matter of Human Psyche

A concerned Ghanaian has wondered how the current leadership can contemplate Accra as the cleanest city when waste is barely managed in the Region. My response: It might take that radical approach to tackle the sanitation crisis in the country, since many Ghanaians behave like ostriches. Elsewhere, it was easy to get residents to commit to safe waste management in order to protect the environment. When it emerged that the environment was in dire straits, those communities resorted to change bad practices for safe ones. They revised ways of doing and acquiring things. They learnt that global warming, resulting from human activities, pose a threat to humanity, and they have since been seeking ways to combat the phenomenon.

A mini bag of harvested compost

I am using “they” because we have not effectively partnered brethren in other communities in fighting global warming. In the last three decades, we have been consistent in poor waste management. From homes, farms, through real estate development to all other industrial spaces, not only have we failed to improve upon old practices, but we have abandoned the good old ways for just littering/dumping. I am painting a gloomy picture from the filth that surrounds us, filth visible in homes, on streets and school compounds, in drains, work places, hospitals, parks, markets. Individual or collective efforts to improve sanitation tends to be swallowed up by the mass stance for poor waste management.

Logically, formal education has been crucial in creating awareness about global warming, continuous sensitization and searching for refined ways of locating and utilizing resources, and as well managing the inevitable waste generated. Education is the reason communities have moved in heaps and bounds in safe, technological waste management. Apparently, there are grave lapses in our educational system, hence, the apathy towards sanitation.

Last year, in one technical university, two accounting students researched the possibility of exploring their skills in agribusiness. They tested the possibility of starting a business in an environment which does not generally support start-ups with financial capital to access raw materials. The research area was vermicomposting. They targeted compost worms and organic compost, both commercial, products. They collected waste from a domestic kitchen, restaurant and a market woman who sells vegetables. For industrial waste, they collected sawdust from a carpentry workshop, all kinds of paper, except glossy ones, from homes and offices.

They nurtured degradable waste through moisture and temperature for six months, at the end of which period, they harvested healthy worms and the mini bag of vermicompost pictured above. Their major obstacle was obtaining sorted waste. No amount of dialogue or orientation would get the restaurants to sort the waste, because they did not have the time. The two committed students had to sort degradable material from a stinky dustbins for six months. However, they were motivated by global communities engaged in vermicomposting. They were elated when they harvested their own worms. The sense of achievement they experienced is completely foreign to majority of contemporary learners.

They bred worms

However, the institution in question does not even have a mechanism for a comparative assessment of student projects through its Office for Research and Innovation. Such a mechanism would be effective in locating innovative waste management approaches, so that the institution can replicate such approaches across the campus. Over time, such initiatives would spill off into the communities. That is kind of practical approach needed to engage all waste generators in the sanitation journey. It would also be a very effective means to address youth unemployment.

Targeting the cleanest city is a clarion call for every waste generator in the country to become part of waste management. Learning institutions must champion that call. Waste management is an enormous responsibility; therefore, people who have hitherto been apathetic to waste must be gently initiated into a responsible waste management culture. Education is key.

So questions need consideration: Have learning institutions created a sustainable path for safe, innovative waste management? In spite of the numerous mushrooming programmes in engineering, environmental studies, technology, resource management, how many universities or tertiary institutions practice waste sorting and recycling? Have engineering programmes collaborated to invent operational recycling plants? Do projects which demonstrate innovation in waste management get support? How many institutions have programmes in technological waste management, with what impact? In other words, do we live our curriculum?

If we dared ourselves, we could use these questions to evaluate the relevance of curriculum across secondary and tertiary institutions. Have such impacted learners’/societal attitude towards the environment? Safe waste management has implications for our very existence on this planet.

Both creationists and evolutionists accept that oxygen anchors human existence. The fact that our trees absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale, process and send it back to us as oxygen situates our very existence in cleanliness. From my creationist perspective, if the Creator had left photosynthesis in the hands of humans, we would be extinct by now, advertently or inadvertently, through our own works. Thankfully, a superior intelligent force pre-empted that by placing photosynthesis in the hands of nature. Therefore, the ozone layer might be deplete somewhat, but the planet’s supply of oxygen remains constant, and we are!

In effect, any attempt at cleanliness is an attempt to follow nature’s footprint in preserving quality existence. Therefore this mass indifference to filth must be eschewed. Targeting the cleanest city implies a holistic approach from domestic through all segments of society. Small roles would culminate in major roles which would spread responsibility for all across Ghana, not just Accra. Targeting the cleanest city amidst a sanitation crisis is a bold dream by a gutsy doer, who apparently, expects fellow country people to be conscientious doers. And doers we must become, because as long as we are engulfed by filth, we have no claim to human dignity!