Schools in Accra that separate their waste say their efforts are being wasted because collection trucks mix the sorted rubbish back together when they pick it up.

Education officials in the La Dade Kotopon Municipality say the problem has led many schools to give up sorting altogether. Now, the Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO) wants to change that. Under its Zero Waste initiative, it plans to collect separated organic and plastic waste directly from schools in seven municipalities across Greater Accra.

Madam Habiba Kotomah, Education Director for the La Dade Kotopon Municipality, said some schools were part of an earlier pilot that provided bins for sorting, but the effort collapsed at the point of collection.

“We do the sorting in the schools. But when the truck comes around, they put everything back together and it’s frustrating,” she said. “So at a point, most of them stopped the sorting.”

She said schools also lack enough bins, despite repeated requests to the assembly.

Waste is a heavy burden on local government. Antonio Yaira Tokokubi, a Project Coordinator on GAYO’s Zero Waste portfolio, said about 60 percent of the financial resources given to assemblies go into managing waste, mostly organic waste and plastics.

Schools are a major source. “Per the waste analysis that we’ve done, we found out that about 60 percent of the waste that is generated in the school is organic waste, followed by papers and then plastics,” he said.

When organic waste is dumped and left to rot, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. More than half of all the waste Accra produces is organic, and most of it ends up in landfills. In October 2026, officials of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly warned that Ghana risks missing its target of cutting methane emissions from the waste sector by 30 percent by 2030.

Poorly managed waste also has more visible costs. Betty Agyei, Operations and Programs Director at GAYO, pointed to the floods in June and July. “We saw what happened during the June-July flooding, where a lot of waste were within our communities,” she said.

She said the push for schools comes ahead of a government directive requiring all households to start separating their waste from next year. “It’s very important to catch them young,” she said.

Under the initiative, GAYO is working with schools in the La Dade Kotopon, Ledzokuku, Accra Metropolitan and Ablekuma West municipalities, among others, to set up sorting systems and train students.

Separated organic waste is turned into compost for school gardens. Mr Tokokubi said vegetables grown with the compost are free of the chemicals found in synthetic fertilisers. Plastics will go to GAYO’s material recovery facility to be processed into pellets.

Madam Kotomah said GAYO has agreed to collect the sorted waste from schools and pay them a token in return. “So they will come around and pick the organic ones and pick the plastic ones,” she said. “I’m so happy my schools are going to be able to generate some form of IGF from this activity.”

Ms Agyei said the model is already working at municipal level. The La Dade Kotopon Municipal Assembly’s material recovery facility diverts more than 50 tonnes of waste a month, from organics to plastics. She said the initiative will later extend to markets.

At Forces Senior High School, Assistant Headmistress (Domestic) Rosina Lawal has built a culture of keeping bins within reach of every student. She said her goal is one bin for every student.

“Imagine we have bins like one student, one bin. The school, and even not only the school, the whole Ghana will look very beautiful,” she said.

She admitted that enforcing cleanliness has not made her popular. “Parents may talk, the students may hate you, but the fact is, me, I want to make a name,” she said. “You could see the whole school is looking nice.”

She urged GAYO and other partners to keep going. “They should add more, like Oliver Twist, we want more,” she said. “They shouldn’t relax.”

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GAYO brings new bins to help Accra schools turn waste into money through composting and recycling

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