He said this could greatly help address the waste and sanitation challenges the country was facing. Dr Manteaw said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at the just ended International Plastic Recycling and Sustainability Conference in Accra.

Eco-industrial parks are local industrial hubs or campuses located on specifically designated lands in communities for waste recovery, recycling and secondary resource production” he said explaining that adding economic value to waste could potentially hold the key to the country’s waste and sanitation challenges.

Dr Manteaw, who is a Lecturer and an Environment and Social Development Expert, said the current environment policy was conducive for local entrepreneurial innovation in waste recycling for economic development and environmental sustainability.

He said: “the country does not have an efficient and fully functional waste management system. What we have or what we do is not waste management; it is largely waste collection, haulage and dumping which, by all standards, are primitive”.

Dr Manteaw said a functioning waste management system will necessarily have to include material recovery, recycling and reuse processes, for which the country was lacking. He said the eco-industrial parks idea will bolster the current One-District-One Factory policy by creating local economic opportunities, especially for the youth.

Dr Manteaw said such parks could contain different recycling facilities such as composing plants, plastic recycling facilities, electronic waste management, glass recycling, paper recycling, automobile scrap recycling and many more.

The Climate Change Expert said the beauty of these parks was that all the recycling plants and facilities will be located on one site and are integrated into a one-stop process of material recovery and refuse which clearly demonstrates the value chain in what is now called a circular economy.

“Basically, anything that could be recycled on a commercial scale either small, medium, or even large could be located on this park to turn waste into secondary resource or product.” Dr Manteaw said: “eco-industrial parks will provide ready avenue for plastic waste products to be channeled and transformed into secondary products”.

“Apart from the economic value of these parks, it could also function as district or community   innovation centers where modern science   and   technology   would   converge seamlessly with local and indigenous knowledge systems to transform cultural perceptions of waste in communities”.

 “Serving as waste recovery innovation centers in local communities, managers of these eco-industrial parks could partner with the new technical universities and research institutions to deepen research and learning.  “The idea of Eco-Industrial Parks could provide an innovative and novel avenue to change Ghana’s waste management practices, as well as change social our behaviours”, he stressed.