Food Packaging Prices to rise
The Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement last week of a firm January 2027 ban on styrofoam food containers has been hailed as a bold environmental move. But a New Republic investigation reveals the policy could throw over 1,200 workers out of their jobs, strand equipment worth US$1.2 billion, and push food packaging prices up four‑fold all while leaving the real causes of Accra’s floods untouched.
The EPA, headed by Professor Nana Ama Brown Klutse, issued a release on 25 May setting 1 January 2027 as the official date to prohibit the production, importation, distribution, sale and use of polystyrene foam products popularly known as takeaway packs.
The decision follows President John Dramani Mahama’s pledge during the 2025 World Environment Day and his reiteration at the National Tree Planting exercise that Styrofoam would be banned because it is “one of the biggest polluters”.
Yet neither the President nor the EPA has answered a fundamental question: what is the realistic, cost‑effective alternative?
The three dominant local producers Blowpack, Spaceplast and Ghana Rubber have received no transition roadmap, no financial support, and no clarity on how to retool.
“We are not opposed to protecting the environment,” a senior executive at one of the firms told this newspaper on condition of anonymity. “But you cannot give a fixed date without providing an alternative material that is affordable and available. That is not a ban; that is a closure order.”
Paper bowls, kraft packs, bagasse containers, foil packs and biodegradable materials cost between three and four times as much as styrofoam. Vendors across Accra say the extra cost will be passed directly to consumers hitting low‑income Ghanaians hardest.
“A regular kenkey or jollof pack will go from 20 cedis to 60 or 80 cedis,” a Madina chop bar operator said. “Our customers cannot afford that.”
The only genuinely natural alternative traditional leaf‑based packaging is impossible to scale for modern urban takeaway trade.
And even if a biodegradable substitute were available, Ghana’s broken waste collection system means it would still choke drains. “Changing the material without fixing the drainage and desilting changes nothing,” a Kumasi sanitation engineer said.
The anti‑styrofoam offensive is being sold as a response to flooding. But the EPA’s action looks less like serious policy and more like a public relations exercise to create the impression of action while avoiding the real, politically inconvenient causes.
Let us be honest: the major drivers of flooding are not takeaway containers. They are poor drain construction, lack of proper drainage planning, weak enforcement of sanitation laws, failure to regularly desilt drains, uncontrolled developments blocking waterways, and collapsed waste management systems. None of these are being tackled with any urgency.
Then there is the elephant in the drain. Water sachets and flexible plastic wrappers are arguably the single most visible garbage choking gutters nationwide. Walk through any flooded neighbourhood after a downpour: it is sachet plastics, not styrofoam trays, that blanket the sludge.
Why no ban on sachets? Because sachet water is consumed daily by a huge majority of Ghanaians a direct consequence of the state’s decades‑old failure to provide reliable, clean pipe‑borne water.
Banning sachets would trigger mass public anger. “The authorities know they cannot touch sachet water without a political crisis,” a former Accra Metropolitan Assembly waste manager said. “Styrofoam has no powerful constituency. It is the easy headline.”
Before his devastating death with seven others in August 2025, then Environment Minister Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed had cautioned against an abrupt ban. “You do not just ban plastics overnight, because you are dealing with people’s livelihoods and habits,” he argued. “We must first provide affordable and practical alternatives before enforcing restrictions.”
That advice appears to have been buried with him. The EPA’s fixed date 1 January 2027 gives barely 18 months, yet no alternative is ready, no transition fund has been announced, and no import controls on competing products have been put in place.
The Ghana Plastic Manufacturers Association, led by Ebow Botwe, has repeatedly called for an immediate ban on plastic imports to prevent foreign‑made products from flooding the market and undermining local producers.
“We produce about 16,000 metric tonnes of plastic bags annually, but imports exceed our production,” Botwe told Citi FM in July 2025. That plea remains unanswered.
The ban cuts deepest into the government’s own narrative of economic revival. President Mahama has been wooing UK investors in London, celebrating inflation down to 3.4 per cent, GDP crossing US$114 billion, and a stabilised cedi.
He has promised a manufacturing renaissance under the 24‑Hour Economy programme.
Yet at the same time, Accra is preparing to shutter a domestic manufacturing sector worth over a billion dollars, destroying more than 1,200 direct jobs – and countless indirect ones without a transition plan.
“If a government can kill a compliant industry overnight for headlines, no factory is safe,” a private sector economist said. “This is precisely the kind of policy unpredictability that spooks capital. It undermines the very investment climate Mahama is selling in London.”
Even Dr. Paa Kwesi Eduaful Abaidoo, CEO of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, who welcomed the ban as “long overdue”, acknowledged the high costs.
“There may be drops in labour income and government tax revenues,” he wrote. “Sustainable alternatives are likely to be very expensive. The ban may struggle without robust government oversight, leading to black markets and illegal imports.”
The EPA points out that 75 countries including Ireland, England (2023), Canada (2022), France (2020) and Rwanda (2009) have banned styrofoam in food packaging.
That is true. But most of those bans were phased over years, accompanied by heavy investment in alternatives, waste collection infrastructure, and public education. Ghana has none of that.
The Pan‑African Manufacturers Association (PAMA) warned in its April 2025 bulletin of “deep concern about the speed, scope, and industrial implications of the current plastic ban trend” across the continent. “The fight against plastic pollution should not sacrifice Africa’s fragile manufacturing future,” PAMA stated. Ghana appears to be ignoring that advice.
Styrofoam is indeed a pollutant. It does clog drains. It does persist in the environment. But real environmental protection is not about finding the easiest product to ban for headlines.
It is about confronting the actual causes of flooding proper drainage, regular desilting, enforceable by‑laws, functional waste collection and treating all pollutants equally, including politically sensitive sachets.
Until then, the 2027 ban will stand as a monument to political convenience: a policy that costs jobs, raises food prices, spares the real culprits, and will not unblock a single drain. The government has 18 months to prove otherwise. The signs so far are not encouraging.