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The Ghanaian originator of building and pavement blocks molded from plastic waste has appealed to investors to partner him to commercialize the product.Nelplast Ghana Limited, a Ghanaian owned company, in a bid to find solution to the huge plastic pollution in the country, invented the plastic pavement blocks as an alternative to asphalt and other materials used for road construction.
The company shreds plastic waste, mix it with sand and uses its invented machines to melt and compress into the various block shapes. Mr Nelson Boateng, Chief Executive Officer of NELPLAST, made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Tuesday in commemoration of this year’s World Enviroment Day.
The day which is celebrated annually on June 5, carries the theme, “Beat plastic pollution” for 2018, and it is used by the United Nations to encourage awareness and action for the protection of the environment.
He said his outfit urgently needed investors who would partner them to produce the plastic blocks in large quantities.Mr Boateng said it was one of the ways to clean up the country’s plastic waste as only about seven per cent of the millions of plastic bags manufactured annually in Ghana were recycled.
He lamented that even though the needed proposals had been sent to the One District One Factory Secretariate after it expressed interest in adopting the product into the policy, they were yet to receive any response.
He further indicated that attempts to contract bank loans had also yielded no positive results, a situation preventing the commercialization of the product which had passed laboratory test conducted by the Ghana Highway Authority. The NELPLAST Chief Executive Officer said the product was currently not being sold as they could only produce 200 pieces of pavement blocks from 500 kilos of plastic waste daily due to the manual production process, which he described as tedious and slow
He explained that due to the lack of an automated heat press which would press and dry instantly, they used water to cool the surface of the block and sun- dry it for about 24 hours, a process that robs the product of a smooth shinning finish.
Mr Boateng noted that commercializing the plastic blocks would not only solve the plastic pollution problem, but also guarantee a longer lifespan for the country’s roads while creating jobs for the youth along the value chain.
Mr Boateng said he was currently using the product to patch portions of roads in the Ashaiman Municipality for free.
