Green neoliberalism: Recycling and sustainable urban development in Sekondi-Takoradi

Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint

Green neoliberalism: Recycling and sustainable urban development in Sekondi-Takoradi Franklin Obeng-Odoom* School of the Built Environment, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Sustainability Africa Plastic Waste Water Cities

Sustainable development has been embraced by neoliberalism in the form of marketising the environment in a ‘green way’. While political economists have considered this movement in terms of the emissions trading scheme and other price based mechanisms posited as solutions to global environmental crises, the particular nature of such discourses at the urban level in Africa is not well understood. Using primary data from Sekondi-Takoradi, a mid-size city in West Africa, this paper demonstrates the origin, nature, problems and contradictions in this form of green neoliberalism. It argues that the tenets and approaches of sustainable urban development are fundamentally inconsistent with green metropolitan neoliberalism. In turn, it is highly unlikely that, recycling, a medium of ‘marketising the environment to save it’, can provide a sustainable solution to the plastic waste glut, engendered by the private provision of urban water. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Africa is now a key location for implementing the view that the ‘environment can be sold to save it’. This idea of marketising the environment to promote sustainable development has gained a strong presence in policy and research circles. It entails the use of price mechanisms or the creation of markets in the management of land and natural resources (e.g., emissions trading scheme and carbon tax) as a way of pursuing sustainable development (Stilwell, 2012). In Africa, most of the attention to this green washing of neoliberalism has focused on the activities of so-called environmentally friendly groups that buy large parcels of land which they claim without ‘preservation’ will be destroyed by local populations (Pearce, 2012). This movement is the new phase of neoliberalism e a concept that is widely used but poorly understood and so requires some elucidation here. Neoliberalism is a political economic concept, a set of ideas, or even a framework used to describe the commodification of all sectors of society (Cahill, Edwards, & Stilwell, 2012, p.6). It refers to the financialisation and marketization of society, economy, and environment. Neoliberalism is normally regarded as * Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, Peter Johnson Building, Room 6.44, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. E-mail address: [email protected]. URL: http://obeng-odoom.com 0197-3975/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2013.07.009

the economic philosophy of the capitalist system. It owes its rise and popularity to consistent propagation and defence by neoclassical economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, James Buchanan, and Milton Friedman; political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and George Bush (snr), and right wing think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in London (for a detailed history, see Cahill et al., 2012: 1e11; Harvey, 2006: 11e24; Jones, 2010). While neoliberalism espouses ‘free markets’, ‘actually existing neoliberalism’, that is, neoliberalism in practice, entails the use of considerable state power to ensure its spread and entrenchment (Cahill, 2010). Thus, David Harvey (2006: 25e29) has coined the term ‘neoliberal state’ to describe institutions that either suppress opposition to neoliberalism or support neoliberalism by lubricating the policy sphere with market enhancing tools such as tax breaks and holidays, and creating the requisite business conditions to allow neoliberalism to fester. Neoliberalism has spread widely, from its early days in the Global North and, since the 1980s, two of its apparatchiks, the IMF and World Bank, have greatly helped to propagate it in the Global South through the introduction and guided implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (Owusu, 2003). In recent times, however, neoliberalism has gained a new momentum in the ‘green’ or environmental sector with the current global land grabs e that have focused mainly on Africa and hence elicited several studies looking at the dynamics on the continent (see, for example, Alden Wily, 2011; Borras & Franco, 2012; Cotula & Vermeulen, 2011) e as its new phase.

130

F. Obeng-Odoom / Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134

Research on how this new movement in neoliberalism pans out in cities in Africa is, however, difficult to find. Yet, the forces of marketising the environment are at play in urban Africa too. They are most evident in the drive to encourage the establishment of corporate recycling entities supported by ‘plastic merchants’ who buy plastic waste from poor collectors or pickers to make profit (Njeru, 2006). One African country where this notion of sustainable urban development is fast catching on is Ghana. According to the recent State of the Nation Address, delivered by the country’s president, the ‘[f]ocus is on waste and sanitation management systems not just waste collection and disposal. The emphasis will also be on waste recovery and recycling as well as providing incentives to increase private sector participation in the hygiene, sanitation and pollution control sector’ (Mahama, 2013: 15, emphasis added). There is a clear policy position of promoting private recycling and private collection of plastic waste in cities. So, the emphasis on plastic waste management is gradually expanding from just private waste collection to private recycling and treatment. Indeed, the Government of Ghana, for example, through the Ghana Investment Promotion Council (GIPC) brochure, Doing Business in Ghana (Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, nd), calls on investors in Ghana and overseas to invest in the recycling business for a clean environment. The government promises a 7-year tax holiday incentive and, as with other businesses, investment laws that guarantee 100% transfer of dividends and profits. Similarly, members of the Parliament of Ghana have recurrently called for a policy on waste disposal that is broader than collection and entails private recycling for clean urban development (see the report by Adu-Gyamera & Vinorkor, 2013). The idea of marketising the environment also enjoys considerable support in the media (see, for example, the editorial of the Daily Graphic, 2013). Thus, both within and without executive policy circles, in theory and in practice, recycling waste for profit has been promoted in Ghana. It is important to explore to what extent recycling is a panacea to the plastic waste pandemic. The existing studies are inadequate for this purpose because they typically focus on waste management generally, not plastic waste recycling (see, for example, OtengAbabio, 2010; Baabereyir, 2009; Baabereyir et al., 2012). This paper tries to fill the gap by adopting a critical immanentist approach to urban studies that recognises both institutions and structures within which they operate not as oppositional but as co drivers of urban environmental, economic, and social change (Karaman, 2012). The data for the analysis inter alia are taken from primary material gathered from Sekondi-Takoradi, the third largest urban settlement in Ghana. The analysis shows that, the touted advantages of recycling are neither obvious nor assured. Rather, the focus on recycling generates contradictions, including diverting attention from the social conditions of labour both within and without the process of recycling. It is argued that these contradictions are systemic, although they are aggravated by whimsical institutional practices. The rest of the paper is structured into four sections. The next section looks at methodology, followed by a discussion of the recycling model. Contradictions in the model are analysed in the third section, while the final section examines policy issues from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Methodology This is a case study, which provides an in-depth analysis of a single recycling system. While case studies have drawbacks such as uniqueness and limitations in generalizability (King, Keohane, & Verba, 1996), research by Bryman (2008: 52e62) has shown that

they succeed in providing a detailed and intensive examination of a situation from which important insights can be extracted and brought to bear on pressing political economic issues. Case studies normally lead to the generation of qualitative evidence, but it is more effective if they lead to the collection of both qualitative and numeric data. Further, Bryman (2008: 52e62) notes that the challenge of peculiarity of conclusions can be mitigated if the case study is made to engage with a body of literature or theory. In that sense, the research problem or questions are generated based on the ongoing debate or theory, while the case itself is chosen in a way to exemplify the issues that ooze out of the debate or theory. From these perspectives, the recycling system under study was chosen as an exemplifier of broader claims about recycling in the literature. The aim is not to generalise but to investigate in one case the posited merits of green neoliberalism and draw inferences from the study. Primary data were collected in Sekondi-Takoradi from December 2012 to March 2013. The choice of Sekondi-Takoradi as a case study area is appropriate because, although it has a substantial plastic waste problem, constituting 8.5% of solid waste in the metropolis or more than twice the proportion of plastic waste in Accra, little research has been done on the plastic waste issue in the city (Baabereyir, 2009). More so, plastic waste contributes significantly to the cholera (because plastic waste adds to the filth in the city) and malaria (because plastic sachets and bottles serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes) menace in the metropolis (Gyamfi, 2012). Finally, the present focus helps to correct the over emphasis on primary cities in research on the urban question in Africa (Bryceson, 2011), so, overall, this case study area is appropriate for the current research. Initially, transect walks were undertaken to observe the waste trail around the city, and the waste collection processes, while asking questions especially in the Market Circle area e without interviewing people. This method was used because it has successfully been adopted for the study of sanitation issues globally (see, for example, Kar, 2005). Subsequently, several in-depth interviews with the only recycling merchant in the metropolis and two (2) of his assistants were carried out. Further, interviews with three (3) plastic pickers were conducted. Finally, three officers at the Ghana Water Company Ltd. in Takoradi, managers of urban water and suppliers of water to plastic water producers were interviewed. The next section focuses on the recycling experience of Sekondi-Takoradi, in terms of origin, operation, and organisation, before looking at challenges. The recycling model The model is pyramid shaped: there are relatively large numbers of pickers at the base, a small number of agents who buy plastic waste from pickers in the middle, and a very small number of recycling companies mostly headquartered in Accra and Tema at the apex. Usually, because the recycling companies are mainly concentrated in the capital city of Ghana and in its satellite city, Tema, the role of agents and pickers seems to be fused together in those cities. That is, pickers in Accra and Tema typically sell water bottles and sachets directly to recycling companies such as Space Plus, Blue Plus, Race Start, and Topp Industry e all in Accra, but this modus operandi is different in Sekondi-Takoradi. Currently, there is only one recycling merchant/agent in Sekondi-Takoradi. He is originally from Kumasi where the recycling model is better known than Sekondi-Takoradi. This merchant migrated to Sekondi-Takoradi with his recycling business idea because he wanted to avoid the competition in Kumasi, Accra, and Tema. He started the business as a picker, collecting and going to sell plastic waste to the people in Kumasi whom he had seen doing the business before his migration to Sekondi-Takoradi. With the

F. Obeng-Odoom / Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134

effluxion of time, however, he met someone who advised him to sell to the companies in Accra directly, so he abandoned the middlemen or agents in Kumasi and started selling plastic waste directly to recycling companies in Accra and elsewhere (e.g., CYCLOX in Aboransa in the Western Region of Ghana). With time, as people saw him and learnt about how much could be earned from picking plastic waste, they became interested in picking plastic waste and then sold it to him, their new agent. After some initial setbacks in finding business premises in the city, the picker-turned-merchant obtained a container and a business site from the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA). A formal registration certificate was not seen on the ‘business premises’ during interviews, but the inscription on the makeshift ‘office’ says the entity is sponsored by the SWISS foundation and STMA. The study found that the purchasing agent belongs to an organised group, ‘the chairman’ of which was telephoned during the interview to provide some information about the association. According to the chairman, there are some 250 agents in Ghana as a whole, but only 120 attend meetings regularly. As an active member of the association, the experiences of this Sekondi-Takoradi plastic merchant are rich and provide important insights about green neoliberalism. The work of the agent can start around 4 am/5 am and can go on deep into the day/night, depending on the schedule of trucks that collect the plastic waste in Sekondi-Takoradi and transport them for sale in Accra. This recycling organisation is a small scale business entity, made up of (a) three people at the helm of management (b) 10 regular pickers, and (c) many irregular pickers who sell to the business venture from time to time. Most of the pickers are women and are elderly. At the time of the interviews, there were 9 women and 1 man. Another feature of the pickers is that most of them are strangers in Sekondi-Takoradi. The indigenes do not usually find this work attractive typically because it is ‘crown’ or disgraceful to be found collecting garbage. So, it seems pickers in Sekondi-Takoradi typically hail from poorer regions in Ghana. Nevertheless, strangers who have lived in the city long enough to be known by the indigenes feel uncomfortable working as pickers. Thus, poor people from wealthier regions may become pickers without suffering ‘crown’ or disgrace, if they are new in Sekondi-Takoradi. In spite of these findings, more research is needed on the demography and social identities of pickers. Pickers’ use multiple methods to collect plastic waste. Some go round the city to collect them; others put boxes and bags in the places where water is sold into which some customers deposit empty sachets and bottles for subsequent collection. A few pickers go to hotels and guest houses where they buy plastic waste from cleaners who typically sell a box of water bottles for $0.53.1 For small-sized bottles, 24 make up one box, while for the mediumsized bottles, 10 make a box. The bags of pickers may sometimes contain non water bottles such as Tampico (orange juice) bottles, but water bottles constitute a substantial share. The key point here, however, is that pricing for plastic waste is done per box. One guest house cleaner could make $58.5 a day, if many people visited the guest house, and drank many bottles of water, and other cleaners were not interested or around to compete for the plastic waste. There are temporary and quasi institutional pickers too. For instance, Zoomlion2 workers occasionally sell some bags of plastic waste for additional income gained from plastic merchants, not Zoomlion as a company. Pickers can register with an agent, but the agent does not require them to do so. Perhaps, it is not in the

131

economic interest of pickers to register with one agent as they too need to sell to the merchant paying the highest amount of money. Some pickers sort out plastic waste, if they have been taught how to do so, but given that there is no difference in payment between sorted and unsorted waste, pickers have no incentive to and, in fact, do not usually sort out the waste they collect. In such cases, the purchasing agent does the sorting as an extra piece of work; in a process called ‘rebagging’. The mode of storing plastic waste does not vary as much as how plastic waste is collected. Pickers typically store waste gathered in their homes or work places; in open places or storerooms. When pickers have enough bags of plastic waste, they transport their wares to the buying merchant or sometimes the merchant drives a truck around the city to collect the bags of plastic from pickers. When sufficient bags have been collected at the business premises of the buying merchant or agent, they are transported usually to Accra where the recycling companies buy from the agents. In future, it is likely that recycling plants will be established in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis. Currently, RW Engineering in the Metro Mass Bus Yard, Sekondi Road, Takoradi has started an incineration equipment to manage waste, which can safely take care of 95% of plastic waste collected. In turn, its waste management has been labelled ‘ecological waste disposal’ (Oil City Magazine, 2012: 36e37). In the neighbouring communities of Abuesi, Shama, and Aboadze e all in the Western Region of Ghana where SekondiTakoradi is located e a local NGO, Daasgift Quality Foundation, undertook a 6-month pilot programme to collect rubbish, especially plastic waste, from the communities, store it, and get it collected by Cyclus Elmina Plastic Recycling Ltd. Between August 19, 2011 and February 14 2012, the recycling company collected 2, 589.69 kg from the project sites (Oil City Magazine, 2012: 24e25). So, it would seem that there is a good business environment for corporate recycling to flourish in Sekondi-Takoradi. The key motive for the recycling system is profit, but this drive is covered up by a veneer of trying to ‘help’ the nation and the city to be clean, while making money. The financial returns from this model help to supplement the incomes of the parties involved. How much is paid to pickers varies, depending on the nature of plastic waste, but weight seems to be the key determinant of price. 9 kg of plastic waste ¼ $0.96. How much agents earn was difficult to determine e as is usually the case for research on incomes in Ghana (see, for example, Grant, 2009: 83). The agent mentioned that the recycling companies vary in how much they pay their agents but, overall, his assessment is that the ‘business is good’. However, not all is well with the purchasing agent, a key link in the recycling model. He complained that initially some state officials, who did not know that he had permission to bag, transport, and sell plastic waste in STMA threatened him with eviction on the basis that he was operating waste business in an area close to offices, schools, and residential settlement e an arrangement they regarded as not keeping the area clean and hygienic. However, this threat went away when the people making them learnt that he had obtained some licensing. Also, the agent complained that there is little capital support for expansion, although he conceded that there is little capital involved in starting up the business too. Finally, he complained that the people in the city, especially the indigenes, look down on him and his cadre of petty business people for doing a dirty job. Beyond these concerns, however, there are bigger issues confronting the recycling model. Contradictions

1 2

The US$-Gh¢ exchange rate used in this paper is Gh¢1.88 ¼ $1. This is a private waste management company in Ghana.

There are three key contradictions. First, the rate of plastic waste generation is much greater than the rate of waste collection for

132

F. Obeng-Odoom / Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134 Table 1 Amount of plastic waste collected, Sekondi-Takoradi, 2009e2012. JaneMay (dry season) JuneeJuly (rainy season) AugeSep (Harmattan)

4e5 tonnes/week 2e3 tonnes/week 4e5 tonnes/week

Source: Fieldwork, 2012e2013.

recycling. How much waste is generated and picked depend on seasons. In the dry season when more water is bought, more plastic waste is typically collected. Table 1 provides a breakdown of how much waste is collected per season. These figures are low compared with how much plastic waste is generated in the metropolis, proxied by the number of corporate entities involved in producing plastic packaged water and how much plastic products/water they produce in Sekondi-Takoradi. Interviews at GWCL showed that, between 2008 and 2012, the number of plastic water producers in the metropolis increased from around 38 to 50. Around the same time, the amount of water consumed rose from 89,639 m3 to 100,585 m3, although there are ups and downs in between these periods as shown in Table 2. According to the officers at GWCL, it is likely that the rate of increase is much higher than is captured in their records because there are private plastic water producers in the metropolis who obtain their supplies from and are certified in other cities. For instance, Voltic sachet and bottled water is produced in Accra but is highly patronised in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis. The mismatch between plastic waste generated and collected has been proven mathematically by Gyamfi (2012) to be extremely high. In turn, there is a plastic waste crisis in the city. Currently, plastic waste constitutes 8.5% of solid waste in the metropolis. This share is more than twice the share of plastic waste in total waste collected in Accra (Baabereyir, 2009). So, clearly, the recycling model is incapable of handling the amount of plastic waste being generated in the city. The second contradiction is that most of the actors involved in the recycling system stand the risk of impairing their health in the process. Those employed to collect, store, and dispose of the plastic waste rarely fully wear protective clothing. The use of masks, gloves, and helmets is rare. It is possible that Zoomlion workers, for example, are given such protective clothing but because of various reasons (e.g., non appreciation of their importance), they hardly use them or all of them. Sometimes, plastic waste workers are dressed in boots, but not in gloves; helmets but not masks. Even if people wore all the protective clothing and tools offered, the company still falters because it does not undertake effective education to make its workers use protective clothing always. These dynamics pose a health risk to workers, especially because some pickers do not wash their hands at all or do not wash their hands with soap before using their hands to eat. Currently, no study exists on the health conditions of pickers and agents, so the nature of this contradiction is not well understood. A longitudinal study will eventually be needed to analyse the precise ramifications of these risky behaviours. For the time being, international research (Gutberlet & Baeder, 2008) e

Table 2 Water Production and Consumption in Sekondi-Takoradi, 2008e2012. Year

Average no. of producers

Consumption m3

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

38 30 33 53 51

89,639 71,862 78,424 109,761 100,585

Source: Fieldwork data obtained from GWCL (Western Region).

which shows that informal recyclers recurrently suffer severe health problems including bronchitis, injuries and sores e provides strong grounds to argue that the Sekondi-Takoradi recycling model is likely to have dire health implications. A third and related contradiction is that waste collected is poorly stored and poorly deposited. The waste collected lies in open space, in close proximity to offices and homes, so they can be breeding grounds for mosquitoes, a source of cholera outbreak, a potential trigger for stench, and hence a threat to public health. There is evidence (Baabereyir, 2009) that plastic waste not sold to the agent is dumped at Mpintsin, a poor community at the outskirt of the metropolis. Residents and members of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have all acknowledged the life-threatening effects of locating a waste site near a human settlement, but to date, the status quo has remained. The work of geographers at the University of Ghana (Owusu, Oteng-Ababio, & Afutu-Kotey, 2011) suggests that, if unresolved, such issues can lead to large scale conflicts, stress, and hence a disturbance of the peace in the city. Further, the Environmental Protection Agency (2012) has warned that landfills such as the one at Mpintsin are major contributors to methane gas emissions which are toxic, but are presently not managed in Ghana. Thus, there is an urgent need for reconsidering the current policy on generating plastic waste and encouraging recycling. Policy considerations First, however, it is important to understand how plastic waste became so widespread. Prior to colonial administration, the people of Ghana obtained their water supplies traditionally, that is, from harvesting rain, from streams, rivers, and other water bodies. Modern water supply was introduced by the coloniser, but colonial discriminatory policy was such that such services benefitted only the colonial administrators and a cadre of elite natives. Upon the attainment of independence in 1957, the Nkrumah government with its pan African and socialist policies tried to run a state-led and managed water supply system (Twumasi, 1981). While there were pockets of selectivity in the supply of water, culminating in what Tom McCaskie, eminent historian, has called ‘water wars’, this was mainly to reward and punish respectively government supporters and opponents (see McCaskie, 2009). The overall expressed philosophy was, however, state provided water for all. The paradigm shift from state provision was gradual, but it attained momentum in the early 1980s during the implementation of the Economic Recovery Programme, Ghana’s version of the Structural Adjustment Programmes. The reasons cited for the change in orientation were operational challenges, increasing indebtedness, and the lack of human resources. Such problems could plague the private sector too, of course, but the experts appointed to diagnose the root cause of the problems facing the water sector identified ‘government failure’ as the primary driver of all the problems (Bohman, 2010; Yeboah, 2006). So, privatisation started. The private sector was a better manager; the government did not have the experience to manage the sector efficiently, so went the story. The account of Bohman (2010), Obeng-Odoom (2012), and Yeboah (2006) shows that civil society organisations protested the attempt to commodify water provision. At first the government and its so-called development partners were reluctant to make any concessions, but as pressure mounted they decided to toe a ‘middle line’ in the form of implementing a publiceprivate partnership model of water service. The terms of engagement included state ownership of the basic infrastructure with private management of the water facilities. The name given to this system was ‘affermage’, a model that offered sweeping powers to the private operator.

F. Obeng-Odoom / Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134

Again, civil society organisations, notably the National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water spoke against the distribution of power between the state and the private provider. The government was later to adopt a watered down version of the model called ‘management contract’ in which the government still owned the infrastructure and the private actor managed the service, but some of the powers of the private entity were curtailed. Alongside these changes, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission was appointed to regulate the sector and protect the interest of the consumer. The successful manager was Aqua Vitens Rand which operated the system up until 2011, when the government of Ghana took over urban water management again, albeit under a new public management style of governance that encourages private provision of plastic packaged water. Thus, the social and political economic structure for water sold in plastic bottles and sachets has become a usual part of urban life and with it the haphazard disposal of plastic containers to create a waste pandemic. Simultaneously, as earlier mentioned, the state has also been advocating the private management of waste. It has not always been the case that the private sector was regarded as a partner in waste management. As with water, this paradigm shift became intensified during the 1980s. Then, as now, the waste management departments of urban local governments were asked to invite private sector participation in waste management. The Urban Environmental and Sanitation Project of the World Bank played a particularly instrumental role in the process by helping to train local government staff to become contract administrators. They were trained in franchising, contracting out, sub-contracting, and open competition and have been using these approaches and varieties of them to this date (Awortwi, 2004). The current moment in waste administration seems to be a tacit acceptance of recycling by the local and national authorities (see Grant and Oteng-Ababio, 2012) e although, as we have seen, this model has become a kind of Frankenstein Monster. Suggestions abound on what can be done to improve the plastic waste management system in Ghana. They range from empowering city authorities financially, improving the functioning of land markets for more effective waste disposal, ensuring better planning, encouraging private waste management, and facilitating private recycling (Baabereyir, 2009; Baabereyir et al., 2012; Owusu et al., 2011). More recently, a 20% tax on plastic products was proposed but never implemented by the state, probably influenced by ‘public’ outcry and sentiments such as those expressed by the Association of Ghana Industries (2012: 23) which strongly opposed the tax and claimed that ‘[t]he advent of plastic packaging has improved packaging of Made-in-Ghana goods, and therefore, competitiveness of these products’. A policy rethink is needed. The current so-called social democratic government promises a new order. Yet, its political promises have not been backed by action. For instance, in the recent State of the Nation’s Address (Mahama, 2013), the president promised to increase water supply infrastructure and maintain old ones (see Mahama, 2013: 15). Later, in a visit to the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), he promised to increase government funding to it (Ghana News Agency, 2013). Further, the newly appointed Minister of Local Government and Rural Development has promised to elevate the waste issue to the level of a national priority, mainly through strict enforcement of bye laws on littering (Daily Graphic, 2013). These promises are yet to be fully honoured, but granted that they will eventually be implemented, the issue of how effective they are also arises. In their present form, these promises ignore the provision of safe, reliable, and equitably distributed water. Similarly, they overlook issues related to the deconstruction of the dominant view that private water service is of superior quality, and questions about

133

private sector-led waste management services. While it is laudable for the government to consider as inseparable the trilogy of housing, water, and sanitation (see Mahama, 2013: 14), the bureaucracy remains wedded to the idea of waste treatment as a panacea and hence mis-specifies the source of the problem. All these promises focus on managing waste already produced, and say little or nothing about the root cause of the proliferation of private waste. That is, they compromise rather than confront metropolitan neoliberalism. Yet, a policy of compromise is unlikely to cure the source of the problem, namely the privatisation of water, the related issue of plastic waste generation, and the use of competitive advertisement to reproduce dependence on plastic water. As already noted, as part of the Economic Recovery Programme, water privatisation was vigorously promoted. In turn, for close to three decades, the provision of urban water was the preserve of private providers. However, the failure of the private company to meet its own targets and those set by the public regulator led to the return of government provision since 2009 (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). Even then, the state has adopted a ‘business as usual’ stance regarding the private production and sale of plastic packed water by essentially allowing the use of the air waves, print media, and street signs to propagate and reproduce a discourse that packaged water is ‘pure water’ (Stoler, 2012). There have been historically constructed discourses and perceptions that such packaged (especially bottled and branded plastic bottled and sachet water such as Voltic) water is improved, better, of higher quality, that it is water for the sophisticated and the urbane (McCaskie, 2009). Hence, the use of advertisements only feeds into, reproduces, and deepens these long standing perceptions. Intuitively, the state-provided urban water is perceived as impure. While occasionally it is reported that publicly provided water contains some impurities, similar problems plague packaged water too (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). Further, it is the same GWCL that supplies water in the metropolis also approves of the quality of the pure water some of which, according to officials are not brought for regular testing. Yet, partly as a result of this discourse and partly owing to inefficiencies and corruption bedevilling the public provision of water (Dogbey, 2013) coupled with good profits from the water business, there continues to be a boom in plastic water supply, which, in turn, contributes substantially to the plastic waste menace. These analyses are consistent with recent international econometric evidence (Viscusi, Huber, & Bell, 2013) which proves the close linkages between neoliberal state activity, a boom in private water, waste, and recycling processes. Thus, any policy intent on ameliorating waste ought to substantially confront these fundamental connections rather than focus on one link in the chain. Conclusion Like elsewhere in Africa, plastic waste is a major problem in Sekondi-Takoradi. Doing nothing about the problem can lead to a degeneration of the situation and further worsen the spread of opportunistic diseases such as cholera and malaria which are prevalent in the metropolis. The dominant posited neoliberal solution is to marketise the environment by encouraging and supporting corporate recycling. As we have seen, the system is very low cost, offers employment opportunities to the poor, and performs as well as can be expected under difficult circumstances, which include some of the typical problems with informal enterprises, including financial difficulties, environmental inadequacies (affecting workers and residents in the vicinity where the recycling materials are kept), and difficult relations with authorities. A major issue is that the approach does not address systemic causes of the problem, namely the commodification and

134

F. Obeng-Odoom / Habitat International 41 (2014) 129e134

privatisation of water and the resulting increase in the private production of plastic packaged water. Further, it ignores the conditions of labour in trying to make profit, leading many to risk unhealthy lifestyles through unhealthy plastic waste collection practices e to survive. Instead, this neoliberal solution to what is a crisis of capital is greatly assisted by a sustained discourse that private water is ‘pure’ while public water is ‘impure’ and ringing endorsement by both the state and the media. Recycling e or re-using waste e itself is desirable and helps, by definition, to reduce waste. However, when it is marketised and the ‘raw materials’ of the process are the by-products of the commodification of society there are serious political economic ramifications. A bold and intelligent state-led recycling scheme motivated mainly by a desire for clean environment and human need and social protection can contribute to ameliorating the plastic waste problem. Yet, even then, recycling cannot be regarded as a panacea. It is imperative to substantially reduce the need to purchase packaged water by providing safe, reliable, equitable, and affordable water efficiently to urban populations. Such efforts by the state will have to be accompanied by a sustained education programme about the high quality of public water to correct the suggestion by private producers that publicly provided water is impure. Finally, more pragmatic steps such as providing the city with garbage bins can also be of help. How to fund these policy suggestions and the process of generating the needed political will to change the status quo are likely to be major obstacles to progress. However, if it is granted that the newly elected government will be committed to the social democratic credentials that it recurrently touts, it can free the ‘aid’ given to private producers in the form of tax holidays, use its taxation powers to obtain more revenue, or use part of the revenue accruing from the vast amount of resources in the Western Region to bring about a sustainable change and ensure sustainable urban development. Currently, there is no major departure from ‘the old ways’. The government communication machinery typically engages in social democratic pretensions and tokenist socialist rhetoric, but it is probably too early to reach any decisive conclusions about the direction of government policy since the current regime is only eight months old. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the insights he obtained from all the interviewees for the study, and the learned comments on a previous draft of the paper by the anonymous readership of Habitat International. He is thankful to the University of Technology, Sydney for funding the study, and most grateful to Prof. Spike Boydell for facilitating the field research and obtaining some of the data. The usual disclaimer applies. References Adu-Gyamera, E., & Vinorkor, M.-A. (2013). MPs want policy on waste disposal. Daily Graphic. February 22. Alden Wily, L. (2011). ‘The law is to blame’: the vulnerable status of common property rights in sub-Saharan Africa. Development and Change, 42(3), 733e757. Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). (2012). Towards making policy formulation in Ghana more transparent. Accra: AGI. Awortwi, N. (2004). Getting the fundamentals wrong: woes of public-private partnerships in solid waste collection in three Ghanaian cities. Public Administration and Development, 24(3), 213e224. Baabereyir, A. (2009). Urban environmental problems in Ghana: A case study of social and environmental injustice in solid waste management in Accra and SekondiTakoradi. Ph.D thesis. University of Nottingham. Baabereyir, A., Jewitt, S., & O’Hara, S. (2012). Dumping on the poor: the ecological distribution of Accra’s solid-waste burden. Environment and Planning A, 44(2), 297e314. Bohman, A. (2010). Framing the water and sanitation challenge: A history of urban water supply and sanitation in Ghana 1909e2005. unpublished PhD dissertation. Sweden: Umea University.

Borras, S. M., Jr., & Franco, J. C. (2012). Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change: a preliminary analysis. Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1), 34e59. Bryceson, D. (2011). Birth of a market town in Tanzania: towards narrative studies of urban Africa. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 5(2), 274e293. Bryman, A. (2008). Social research methods (3rd ed.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Cahill, D. (2010). ‘Actually existing neoliberalism’ and the global economic crisis. Labour and Industry, 20(3), 298e316. Cahill, D., Edwards, L., & Stilwell, F. (2012). Introduction: understanding neoliberalism beyond the free market. In D. Cahill, L. Edwards, & F. Stilwell (Eds.), Neoliberalism: Beyond the free market (pp. 1e12). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Cotula, L., & Vermeulen, S. (2011). Contexts and procedures for farmland acquisitions in Africa: what outcomes for local people? Development, 54(1), 40e48. Daily Graphic. (2013). Our environment is littered with refuse. Daily Graphic. February 27. Dogbey, L. (2013). Corrupt deals uncovered at Ghana Water Company. Herald. February 27. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2011). Ghana’s second national communication to the UNFCC. Accra: EPA. Ghana News Agency. (2013). President tours water facilities in Gt Accra, ER. Daily Graphic. February 27. Grant, R. (2009). Globalizing city. Urban and economic transformation of Accra, Ghana. New York: Syracuse University Press. Grant, R., & Oteng-Ababio, M. (2012). Mapping the invisible and real ‘African’ economy: urban e-waste circuitry. Urban Geography, 33(1), 1e21. Gutberlet, J., & Baeder, A. M. (2008). Informal recycling and occupational health in Santo Andre, Brazil. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 18(1), 1e15. Gyamfi, M. (2012). Sequential ordering of routes for trucks for efficient garbage collection: Case study of Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA). A thesis submitted to Department of Mathematics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Partial Fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Industrial Mathematics. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of global capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development. New York: Verso. Jones, E. (2010). The Chicago school, Hayek and the Mont Pèlerin society. Journal of Australian Political Economy, 65(Winter), 139e155. Kar, K. (2005). Practical guide to triggering community-led sanitation. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Karaman, O. (2012). An immanentist approach to the urban. Antipode, 44(4), 1287e 1306. King, G., Keohane, R. O., & Verba, S. (1996). Designing social inquiry: Scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mahama, J. (2013). ‘State of the Nation Address’, a national address given by the president at the Ghana Parliament House, Accra. February 21. McCaskie, T. (2009). “Water wars” in Kumasi, Ghana. In Francesca Locatelli, & Paul Nugent (Eds.), African-Europe group for interdisciplinary studies (series): Vol. 3. African cities: Competing claims on urban spaces (pp. 135e155). Leiden, Netherlands; Boston, MA: Brill. Njeru, J. (2006). The urban political ecology of plastic bag waste problem in Nairobi, Kenya. Geoforum, 37, 1046e1058. Obeng-Odoom, F. (2012). Beyond access to water. Development in Practice, 22(8), 1135e1146. Oil City Magazine. (2012). Green Ghana. Oil City Magazine. Takoradi. Oteng-Ababio, M. (2010). Private sector involvement in solid waste management in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area in Ghana. Waste Management and Research, 28, 322e329. Owusu, F. (2003). Pragmatism and the gradual shift from dependency to neoliberalism: the World Bank, African leaders and development policy in Africa. World Development, 31(10), 1655e1672. Owusu, G., Oteng-Ababio, M., & Afutu-Kotey, R. L. (2011). Conflicts and governance of landfills in a developing country city, Accra. Landscape and Urban Planning. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.10.005. Pearce, F. (2012). The land grabbers: The new fight over who owns the earth. Boston: Beacon Press. Stilwell, F. (2012). Marketising the environment. Journal of Australian Political Economy, 68(Summer 21011/2012), 108e127. Stoler, J. (2012). Improved but unsustainable: accounting for sachet water in post2015 goals for global safe water. Tropical Medicine and International Health, 17(12), 1506e1508. Twumasi, P. A. (1981). Colonialism and international health: a study in social change in Ghana. Social Science and Medicine. Part B: Medical Anthropology, 15(2), 147e151. Viscusi, W. K., Huber, J., & Bell, J. (2013). Discontinuous behavioural responses to recycling laws and plastic water bottle deposits. In American law and economics review (pp. 110e155). Yeboah, I. (2006). Subaltern strategies and development practice: urban water privatization in Ghana. The Geographical Journal, 172(1), 50e65.

Franklin Obeng-Odoom is the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of the Built Environment, University of Technology, Sydney in Australia. He is the author of Governance for Pro-Poor Urban Development: Lessons from Ghana (Routledge, 2013) and a recipient of the maiden World Social Science Fellowship awarded by the International Social Science Council.