Ghana’s Growth Spurs Uncontrollable Trash
ACCRA, Ghana—Plastic shopping bags choke the waterways in this capital, once the seat of Africa’s fastest-growing economy... Drains clogged by plastic bags overflowed this month, causing a massive flood in which at least 150 people died, 90 of them burned alive when the runoff carried fuel into a fire. The water caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.
Just two decades ago, countries like Ghana were worried about how to jump-start growth. In the early 2000s the nation emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies—Africa’s fastest in 2011—with an abundance of plastic bags serving as a tangible symbol of a rising consumer class.
But the country’s consumption-driven growth has burdened Ghana’s meager infrastructure. Families brought home appliances such as refrigerators faster than their government could build power plants. They bought cars faster than the state built roads. Now, the country suffers dayslong blackouts and hourslong traffic jams, two reasons why growth this year is projected at just 3.5%.
The country also faces a profusion of tossed-out plastic bags. Along with other refuse, they caused the main blockage during the flood, said Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama. Aside from bags, the junk that caused the catastrophe represented a cross-section of the consumer goods Ghanaians had spent the past decade buying in record volume.
“Plastics are choking the drains.…It’s mind-boggling, the plastic bottles, the pieces of timber, and firewood, and old mattresses, and old furniture, and pieces of old cars” that end up in Ghana’s sewer system, he told journalists this month. Now, Mr. Mahama has become the latest African leader to weigh a crackdown on plastic bags.
(snip)
Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda all banned plastic bags—a more-aggressive measure than some of the moves by more ecologically minded governments in Europe. South Africa and Botswana heavily tax bags. Mr. Mahama aims to do one or the other, putting weight behind antibag proposals that have fluttered around Accra’s legislature for years.
More..
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ghanas-growth-spurs-uncontrollable-trash-1434928945
