Accra, Sept. 22, GNA - Ghana is to become a biodegradable hub in the West African Sub-Region and help replace non-biodegradable materials with eco-friendly products in the Region.

Biodegradable products are made from renewable sources from 100 per cent eco-friendly, biodegradable materials.

The eco-friendly materials are 10 per cent and more superior in design and performance to their less environmentally friendly counterparts, Mr. David Ludwick, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RETURN2GREEN (R2G) from the USA, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Accra on Tuesday.

He said R2G was a company committed to replacing non-biodegradables and in many cases toxic-disposable products used for food packaging and services, product packaging, and medical applications with their biodegradable alternatives.

The CEO said he was amazed when he saw a documentary on Ghana's plastic waste and said with the help of Mr. Kojo Yankah, President of African University College of Communication (AUCC), his company would be entering the Ghanaian market.

The Company, he said, would be bringing its products to Ghana and expressed the hope that after 12 months when feasibility studies had been completed, a plant would be built at Winneba in the Central Region to serve countries in West Africa.

The company is operating in the USA, Canada and Mexico, and has China, Mexico and Thailand as its manufacturing allies.

In Ghana, he noted that the plant would use raw material available in the country, adding that biodegradable products were better alternatives because they decomposed within one to five years unlike the others that took many more years.

Extolling the virtues of Biodegradable products, Mr. Ludwick said the product did not leak toxics into the environment, and added that "we are offering a better solution".

The processes of manufacturing biodegradable products are the same and the customer gets the same product, he said, adding that "We are fully capable of creating customized products per clients' requirements. It is for that reason that R2G feels there was no reason distributors or end-users of disposable food services, medical, and interior packaging products should be selling or using anything other than the 100 per cent biodegradable and environmentally safe products".

Mr. Kojo Yankah said the African University College, in collaboration with R2G International, would soon start training programmes for environmental journalists to enable them to understand and report environmental issues better. He admitted that urbanization had been taken for granted hence the large volumes of waste.

He said he was enthused about the political backing to green Ghana and rid it of the plastic waste menace, and announced that a public lecture to introduce biodegradable products was scheduled for September 24.