FROM ACCRA TO BROCKVILLE – At the Gord Watts Municipal Centre, on a sweltering Thursday afternoon, Nana Adjei heads from the main building to the compost site – by bicycle.
It’s a sign of his passion for the environment, and the little things all of us can do to help it heal.
That passion has taken the city’s newest solid waste supervisor and compost manager across an ocean into unfamiliar territory, all in an effort to learn more about environmental action and, he hopes, to help make things better in his native country.
Adjei’s trajectory has been unlike that of most new employees at the city. To say he came here from Toronto, though technically correct, does not capture the whole picture.
A native of Accra, Ghana, Adjei has a degree in geography and rural development from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in his native country, as well as a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies, focused on urban and regional planning, environmental management and climate change, and a Master’s in Environmental Studies, with a focus on waste, energy and climate change, from York University in Toronto.
He started working here in May after working in Toronto’s solid waste department as a chief attendant.
The self-described environmentalist has written articles on the environmental challenges facing the West African country of his birth. He once wrote: “Waste is part of our culture, but doing it right and putting it where it belongs is a habit.”
He found his passion for environmentalism while in university.
“I fell in love with it,” he said, describing the environmental studies course he first took while studying geography in Accra,Ghana.
Canada called to him in a particular way, in combination with a career doing hands-on work that benefits the environment.
“I pursued my dream and that was it and the rest was history,” said Adjei.
While he brings a wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to learn to his work here in Brockville, Adjei has his eyes on a longer-term benefit.
“Ghana has a lot of environmental issues,” he said. “We send everything to landfill. It became a problem. I wanted to solve that problem.”
Through his research and writing, and possibly a return to Ghana in the longer term, he hopes to make a difference and help change waste management practices there.
For now, however, his knowledge and energy are Brockville’s gain.
He considers waste diversion a critical part of his job here, a task he says begins with education, or “helping people do the right thing.”
In Brockville, that means recycling and composting as much as possible, to avoid sending too much waste to landfill.
“When it ends up in the landfill, it’s going to release methane gas, which is a potent greenhouse gas emission,” he said.
Landfills also produce leachate, which have the potential to harm the water table, he noted.
And landfills don’t stop being a concern once they reach their capacity and are shut down; they have to be managed after that, what Adjei calls a “life cycle,” something Brockville realized full well earlier this century when it capped the old landfill at the end of Parkedale Avenue.
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Adjei is eager to remind city residents they have a very practical way to make a difference before this month is over. Brockville’s next Household Hazardous Waste Day will be on Saturday, Aug. 29, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The drop-off event will be on Crocker Crescent.
Last year, city council held an informative debate on just how much the environment should figure in Brockville’s decision-making. While stopping short of Coun. Cameron Wales’s push to have a healthy environment deemed a right, it did commit to considering the environment in its actions.
I commented in this space, at that time, about how the whole discussion was a sign of a new cultural movement emerging in our local civic discourse.
Since then, that movement has been more of a background one, and in recent months it’s obviously been overshadowed by a pandemic.
But Adjei’s dedication to environmentalism, and his being drawn here because of it, would suggest that movement is more than healthy. His energy may even give it a welcome boost.
And if that ends up making things greener in ACCRA & in Ghana as a whole in the long run, we can all celebrate.
Source : The Recorder & Times (Brockville)
