Education and awareness: Changing mindsets to close the recycling loop

From The Customer-centric Entrepreneur Project

Ghana’s rPET revolution requires more than infrastructure—it demands a fundamental shift in how citizens think about waste

Walk through any neighbourhood in Accra, Kumasi, or Takoradi, and you will see them: empty plastic bottles tossed into gutters, piled in informal dumps, or burning in open fires.

These bottles, once containing water, soft drinks, or cooking oil, are viewed by most Ghanaians as waste—something to be discarded and forgotten.

Yet each of those bottles is actually a valuable resource, a raw material that could be transformed into new products, generating income for waste collectors, employment for factory workers, and environmental benefits for all.

This perceptual gap—between plastic bottles as waste versus plastic bottles as wealth—is precisely what stands between Ghana’s current reality and its circular economy future.

The Mohinani rPET recycling initiative can build the most sophisticated processing facility in West Africa, the government can enact the most progressive policies, and investors can commit millions of dollars.

But without a fundamental shift in public consciousness, the 900 million plastic bottles Ghanaians discard annually will continue flowing into gutters and landfills rather than into recycling systems.

The Mindset Challenge

To understand why education matters so profoundly, consider the recycling loop that must function for rPET production to succeed. Consumers must recognise that plastic bottles have value and should not be thrown away carelessly.

Households and businesses must separate bottles from other waste, keeping them clean and accessible. Communities must support waste collectors as essential contributors to environmental sustainability. And society must understand that products made from recycled plastic are markers of environmental responsibility, not inferior alternatives.

Currently, Ghana falls short on all these fronts. Most citizens lack awareness that recycling infrastructure exists or is planned. Source separation—keeping plastic bottles apart from organic waste—is foreign to households accustomed to mixing all refuse together. Waste pickers face social stigma despite performing environmentally beneficial work. These attitudes are not unique to Ghana, but they must change for the rPET initiative to succeed.

Building a National Campaign

A successful national education campaign must be multi-faceted, sustained over years, and coordinated across government ministries, private sector partners, and civil society organisations. The campaign should start with clear, consistent messaging that resonates with Ghanaian values. Messages like “Your Bottle is Worth Money” speak to economic incentives, while “Clean Ghana Starts with You” connects to national pride and the government’s sanitation priorities. “From Waste to Jobs” emphasises employment creation that matters to youth, while “Save Our Oceans, Save Our Future” appeals to environmental consciousness.

These messages must reach citizens through every available channel. Radio remains the most effective mass communication tool in Ghana, with listenership spanning urban and rural areas. Daily radio spots in English, Twi, Ga, Ewe, and other local languages should explain what recycling is, why it matters, and how citizens can participate. Popular radio personalities should be enlisted as ambassadors, lending credibility to recycling messages.

Television provides opportunities for visual storytelling. Short documentary segments showing the journey of a plastic bottle from consumer to recycling facility to new product would demystify the process. Ghanaian celebrities should feature in public service announcements demonstrating proper bottle separation. Short films depicting communities transformed by recycling could capture public imagination while educating about circular economy principles.

Social media campaigns should target urban youth with shareable content. TikTok challenges encouraging creative bottle collection, Instagram campaigns celebrating “recycling heroes,” and Facebook groups sharing waste separation tips can harness peer influence for behaviour change. The Mohinani rPET project should maintain an active social media presence, offering transparency about operations and celebrating milestones.

Schools as Transformation Hubs

If Ghana is serious about building a recycling culture that lasts generations, schools must be central to the strategy. Children are not just future consumers; they are agents of change within their families today. A child who learns about recycling at school often becomes the household’s most passionate advocate for proper waste separation.

The Ministry of Education, partnering with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, should integrate recycling and circular economy concepts into the national curriculum. Primary students can learn that bottles are made from plastic, plastic comes from oil, and recycling saves energy and protects nature.

Science classes can explore the environmental dimensions of waste management. Mathematics lessons can incorporate real-world recycling statistics: if Ghana produces 900 million bottles annually and recycling saves a specific amount per bottle, how much value is created?

Beyond classroom instruction, schools should establish practical recycling programs. Every school in Greater Accra, Ashanti Region, and other urban areas should have designated collection bins for plastic bottles. Student environmental clubs can organise monthly collection drives, with recycling companies providing regular pickup. Schools collecting the most bottles could receive recognition and small financial rewards, creating positive reinforcement. As a matter of fact, this is already being done through the annual Mohinani Recycling and Waste Management Campaign.

Educational field trips to the Mohinani rPET facility, once fully operational, would provide a tangible understanding of industrial recycling. Seeing crushed bottles transformed into clean plastic flakes, then extruded into pellets ready for manufacturing, makes abstract concepts concrete. These visits should include take-home materials that students share with parents, extending educational reach beyond school walls.

Community Outreach and Local Champions

While schools educate the young, community outreach must engage adults where they live, work, and congregate. Traditional leaders, religious figures, and community associations wield enormous influence in Ghanaian society. Chiefs who publicly endorse recycling at durbars, pastors who preach environmental stewardship, and imams who connect waste management to Islamic principles of cleanliness can shift social norms in ways government messaging alone cannot achieve.

The Mohinani rPET initiative should support a network of Community Recycling Champions—respected local figures trained to educate their neighbours about recycling benefits and practices. These champions would organise community clean-up events that also serve as collection drives. They would mediate between formal recycling companies and informal waste pickers, ensuring fair prices and respectful treatment. They would troubleshoot problems: answering questions about what can be recycled, addressing hygiene concerns, and celebrating visible improvements in neighbourhood cleanliness.

Markets, lorry stations, and commercial districts represent particularly important outreach opportunities. These high-traffic areas generate enormous quantities of plastic waste while reaching diverse populations. Large, attractive recycling bins with clear signage should be positioned prominently. Market women’s associations can be engaged as partners, with incentives for vendors who properly separate waste.

Government as Partner and Champion

For all these educational efforts to succeed, the government must be more than a passive supporter. The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) should brand itself as the champion of Ghana’s circular economy transformation, with the Minister regularly speaking about recycling in public forums. President John Dramani Mahama’s “Tree for Life” campaign provides natural synergy with rPET messaging; presidential endorsement would elevate recycling from a niche environmental concern to a national priority.

The government should also provide resources commensurate with the challenge. A national recycling education campaign requires sustained funding for media buys, materials development, community programs, and monitoring.

While private sector partners like Mohinani can contribute, this is ultimately a public good that warrants public investment. Annual funding of GH¢10-15 million for comprehensive education programming would generate returns through improved sanitation, job creation, and environmental protection.

Crucially, the government must ensure that educational messages are matched by visible infrastructure. Asking citizens to separate plastic bottles makes sense only if collection systems exist to retrieve them. Public messaging about recycling rings hollow if residential areas lack accessible drop-off points. Education and infrastructure must advance together, with transparent communication about rollout timelines and geographic coverage.

Measuring Success

How will Ghana know if education campaigns are working? The most direct measure is bottle collection rates. As more citizens understand recycling’s value and participate in collection systems, the tonnage of PET bottles recovered should steadily increase. Baseline surveys measuring public awareness of recycling concepts, attitudes toward recycled products, and self-reported behaviours should be repeated annually to track shifts in consciousness.

But success will also be visible in subtler ways: cleaner streets with fewer bottles in gutters, reduced stigma toward waste collectors, growing consumer demand for products with recycled content, and politicians speaking knowledgeably about circular economy principles.

When a child reminds her parent not to throw a bottle away because “it can become something new,” when a trader proudly displays the recycling bin at his stall, when a community celebrates hitting a monthly collection target—these are signs of transformation taking root.

Ghana’s rPET revolution will ultimately be won or lost not in factories or boardrooms but in the minds and habits of millions of ordinary citizens. Education and awareness are not supplementary to recycling infrastructure; they are its essential complement. The bottles are there, 900 million of them each year.

The question is whether Ghanaians will see them for what they truly are: building blocks of a cleaner, more prosperous, more sustainable national future. With committed, creative, sustained education efforts, the answer can be an emphatic yes.

This article is part of a series exploring Ghana’s rPET recycling initiative. Next Monday: “Plastic Credits and Green Bonds: Innovative Financing for Ghana’s rPET Future”

For information on upcoming entrepreneurship initiatives regarding rPET, contact The Customer-centric Entrepreneur Project on 233 24 306 5555

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