Isaac Aryeetey, YRE Ghana Youth Board Chair, & Jacqueline Banahene, Administrative Assistant, CeST
The Center for Sustainable Transformation (CeST) sent a Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) delegation to the Zero Waste Forum in Istanbul, 5–7 June 2026. Our delegates joined the Circular Economy and Economic Transformation track. Three of its topics apply directly to Ghana: banning single-use products, corporate responsibility for waste across production, and how well recycling systems work. The track’s recommendations feed into the Youth DeclarACTION, which is going to COP31 in Antalya. [link to Youth DeclarACTION article]
What delegates identified
Participants named six barriers to a circular economy:
- poor organic waste management and food systems
- overconsumption of global resources
- centralised financial and energy systems
- tension between growth and environmental limits
- weak government accountability in implementation
- little use of traditional and local knowledge
They proposed community-led circular food systems, local control of finance, and less overconsumption. They also called for stronger government accountability, enforceable sector-specific policies, and Indigenous knowledge built into circular solutions.
Ghana’s waste gap
Ghana’s cities generate more waste each year as they grow. Only about 2–5% of plastic waste is recycled (Collins et al., 2025). The rest goes to landfills, the ocean or drains. Blocked drains worsen flooding, and recent floods in Accra displaced more than 38,000 people and caused several deaths.
Ghana has laws that address waste and pollution. These include the Water Resources Commission Act (1996), the Maritime Pollution Act (2016) and the Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Act (2016). Results depend on political will, funding, enforcement, and the involvement of the people affected.
Today, much of Ghana’s waste response consists of pilot projects. Public agencies, NGOs like ours and private operators lead these projects, many with limited resources. The near-monopoly in the waste sector has not delivered. Coordination is weak at every stage, from policy design to evaluation, so national policy often misses conditions on the ground.
What Ghana needs
Ghana needs to move from a linear economy, where extracted resources become waste, to a circular one, where materials return to production. That shift depends on education, better product design and material choices, clear accountability, and investment in local solutions. Hilde Opoku makes the same case in her analysis of Norway’s and Ghana’s approaches to the SDGs.
Grassroots groups and communities should help design waste policy, not only carry it out. Government strategy, real private sector involvement and local knowledge together will produce policy that works.
Our next steps
Ghanaian youth have grown up with the waste crisis and are ready to act on it. CeST and YRE education programmes train young people to treat waste as a systems problem. The programmes show how engineers, educators, health workers and media each have a part in solving it.
A key outcome of these discussions was the development of a Youth Declaration for Circular Economic Transformation, which is intended to contribute to the COP31 Action Agenda and the Road to Antalya Outcome Statement.
Throughout the discussions, participants identified six major challenges confronting the transition towards a more sustainable and circular economy:
Inefficiencies in organic waste management and food systems; Disproportionate overconsumption of global resources; The centralisation of financial and energy systems; The tension between economic growth and environmental sustainability; Weak government accountability in policy implementation; and The limited recognition and integration of traditional and local knowledge.
Drawing on lived experiences, existing initiatives, and evidence-based discussions, participants collectively proposed a set of recommendations and commitments to address these challenges. These included:
- Building community-led circular food systems;
- Decentralising and localising financial resources;
- Reducing overconsumption and promoting resource efficiency;
- Strengthening government accountability;
- Implementing sector-specific and enforceable policies; and
- Integrating traditional and Indigenous knowledge into circular economy solutions.
The session concluded with the adoption of the Declaration on Circular Economic Transformation, which will be presented to the COP31 Youth Climate Champion Sally Higgins from Australia, and incorporated into broader climate policy discussions leading up to COP31.
One of the most significant takeaways from the Forum was the recognition of young people as essential actors in advancing zero-waste initiatives and climate action. Discussions consistently emphasised the need to move beyond simply raising awareness and instead create meaningful opportunities for young people to contribute to policy development, innovation, decision-making, and implementation. The Forum reinforced the message that while young people have a critical role to play in shaping a sustainable future, meaningful transformation requires collective action, inclusive governance, and shared responsibility across all sectors of society.
Lesson learnt From Zero waste Conference: The need for Youth, government and Stakeholders collaboration on waste management practices in Ghana.
The Zero Waste Forum underscored the urgent need for collaborative approaches to climate resilience and adaptation approaches. This in effect means the need to bring together vulnerable communities, international agencies, national and local governments, civil society organisations, the private sector, and other key stakeholders. The Road to Antalya Conference provided a platform for diverse perspectives, experiences, and initiatives, demonstrating how collaboration can help bridge the persistent gap between policy formulation and implementation.
For Ghana, these lessons are particularly relevant. Addressing the country’s waste management challenges requires a shift away from approaches that place the primary responsibility on already resource-constrained institutions and communities. Instead, there is a need for a radical shift from a linear economy where extracted resources become waste to a circular economy where resources are reused in new products and production lines. This requires a systems approach to the patterns of production and consumption – a core driver in the economy. This can only be achieved through more focused education, product design and material choices; stronger collaboration, clearer accountability, and greater investment in locally driven solutions as Hilde Opoku writes in her analysis of Norway and Ghana’s approach to the Sustainable Development Goals.
The discussions at the Forum highlighted the importance of ensuring that solutions are not developed solely at the national or international level but are informed by the experiences, knowledge, and capacities of communities on the ground. In Ghana, empowering grassroots institutions and communities to develop practical and locally relevant solutions to waste management could play a significant role in shaping more inclusive, effective, and sustainable policies. Local knowledge in addition to government strategies and actual private sector involvement will lead to a more inclusive and effective waste management policies.
A circular economy requires more than improved waste collection and disposal. It requires a fundamental transformation in how resources are produced, consumed, reused, and managed. Such a transformation cannot be achieved through government action alone. It requires the active participation of communities, businesses, civil society organisations, researchers, young people, and other stakeholders across the entire value chain.
Meaningful climate action therefore requires moving beyond policy commitments at summits as COP. It requires action plans that are met through stronger collaboration, improved coordination among stakeholders, the empowerment of local actors, and the meaningful inclusion of communities most affected by environmental challenges.
Ghana’s Waste Management Practices: Challenges and Gaps
Ghana, like many developing countries, faces significant challenges in managing its rapidly growing waste problem. These challenges are particularly pronounced in urban areas, where population growth and rapid urbanisation have intensified waste generation. Despite the country’s economic and social development, waste management practices including reduction, reuse, recycling, landfilling, and incineration remain largely inefficient. Today’s more or less monopoly in the waste management sector of Ghana has also proven ineffective.. For example, some studies, including Collins et al. (2025), indicate that only approximately 2–5% of plastic waste is recycled, while the remainder ends up in landfills, the ocean, or drainage systems. The consequences of these inadequate waste management practices are far-reaching, posing serious threats to the environment, marine ecosystems, and public health.
Across Ghana, beaches are increasingly polluted with large quantities of waste, placing marine life at significant risk. At the same time, blocked drainage systems contribute to flooding during periods of intense rainfall, resulting in the destruction of lives, homes, and livelihoods. Recent flooding in Accra displaced more than 38,000 people and resulted in several deaths, highlighting the close relationship between inadequate waste management, climate vulnerability, and urban resilience. Waste management has therefore become a major environmental concern not only in Ghana but also internationally.
However, the challenge extends beyond reducing waste generation. It also raises important questions about how effective policies and strategies can be developed and implemented to manage waste sustainably.
Ghana has established several environmental laws and regulatory frameworks aimed at addressing these challenges. These include the Water Resources Commission Act, 1996, the Maritime Pollution Act, 2016, and the Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Act, 2016, among others (Collins et al., 2025). However, the existence of legislation alone does not guarantee effective waste management. The effectiveness of these frameworks depends largely on political will, bureaucratic capacity and funding for implementation, enforcement, and the extent to which relevant stakeholders are meaningfully involved in the process.
In practice, much of the responsibility for addressing Ghana’s waste management challenges are only pilot projects, and/or is placed on public institutions, private organisations, non-governmental organisations, as our own, and other stakeholders, many of whom operate with limited financial and institutional resources. At the same time, collaboration among these actors remains inadequate, particularly across the stages of policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. This lack of coordination can create a disconnect between policies developed at the national level and the realities experienced by communities on the ground.
As seen at the Zero Waste conference, we believe that the young generation that has grown up with this waste maniac is also more willing to make the necessary efforts to solve the solution. Through our education programs we try to alert the next generation of leaders to understand the need for a systemic approach to the crises and the need for all sectors, ingenieurs, education, health care takers, media etc to play their part accordingly.
Conclusion
The discussions at the Zero Waste Forum demonstrate that meaningful progress is possible when diverse stakeholders come together to share knowledge, experiences, and practical solutions. For Ghana, the transition towards a circular economy provides an opportunity to move beyond conventional approaches to waste management and embrace systems that prioritise resource efficiency, community participation, innovation, accountability, and sustainability.
Empowering grassroots institutions and communities to actively participate in the development and implementation of waste management strategies can help ensure that policies are more inclusive, locally relevant, and effective. At the same time, stronger corporate responsibility, improved government accountability, decentralised financing, and the integration of traditional and local knowledge will be essential to achieving lasting change.
The lessons from the Zero Waste Forum are clear: Ghana’s circular economy transformation must not only be about managing waste more effectively. It must be about rethinking how society produces, consumes, governs, and works together to build a more sustainable future.