Hosted and facilitated by environmental and climate advocacy organisation, Mckingtorch Africa, the sustainability event drew a diverse group of entrepreneurs and their employees from SMEs including Landmark Homes, CTA Investments, Abii National Savings & Loans, Equity Health Insurance, G&J Ghana, Reime Ghana and Moolre Limited among others.

Participants were enlightened on the best ways to incorporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles into their SMEs to drive long-term business success. The workshop also threw more light on how sustainable practices can help SMEs attract investment, grants and long-term support from global donors.

Founder and CEO of Mckingtorch Africa, Makafui Awuku gave a talk on the business case for ESG practices, design thinking for sustainable solutions and achieving sustainability within SMEs. Makafui highlighted how SMEs can reduce waste, pursue ecological sourcing and packaging, conserve water in their operations, engage host communities, become energy efficient and employ upcycling and sustainability games to spark positive environmental change.

“Profitably and sustainability are mutually inclusive. You don’t have to finish developing our business before you think about sustainability. It can be integrated as part of the core elements because sustainability is profitability. SMEs will save a lot of money from the reduction of waste, water and energy and other elements which helps the SME to be better-off in the long run,” Makafui said.

The sustainability workshop forms part of the activities and benefits for businesses participating in the Telecel SME Month celebration this September, aimed at empowering, supporting and strengthening the growth of emerging businesses.

Tawa Bolarin, Director of Enterprise Business and Wholesale at Telecel Ghana, who joined one of the breakout group sessions tasked to create small lip balm containers from plastic bottles, said “It’s been an enlightening and useful hands-on sustainability workshop. I’m pleased that all SMEs in attendance have learned the various ways they can add sustainable practices to their business operations. More importantly, they have been exposed to how sustainable practices can help them unlock grants and investments for their business.”

Attendees engaged in breakout sessions on upcycling to create earrings and lip balm containers out of glass and plastic waste and develop creative art pieces from plastic waste, recycled material and discarded refrigerator insulation foams. These hands-on activities showed participants how to convert waste into useful artefacts and items.

Patra Agbagbo is with the Business Banking division of Abii National Savings and Loans. Having participated in the workshop with other colleagues, she said they were looking to implement some of the sustainable practices on waste and utility efficiency at their finance institution.

“With this new knowledge, we are already thinking of upcycling the plastic waste in our offices into more creative reuse to help save our environment from pollution and also reduce carbon emissions through efficient use of energy,” Patra said.