Accra, June 20, GNA - Dr Kwesi Owusu, Co-Director of the Seventh Environmental Film Festival in Ghana, has stressed the need for more education and awareness creation on the menace of environmental degradation in Ghana.

While lauding clean environments for better health, tourism development and economic performance, Dr Owusu said that awareness creation needed to move beyond Accra to the rest of the country for more impact.

"We need to move beyond Accra, there is the need for more national education on the menace of environmental pollution. It appears all the reportage we have has been centred in Accra," Dr Owusu said in Accra in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the end of the Seventh Environmental Film Festival.

The festival, organized in collaboration with Creative Storm, an entertainment and Media Company, the National Film and Television Institute, the British Council and the French Embassy in Accra, depicted and raised issues about the environment of Ghana.

Award winning films from the 2011 Environmental Film Competition, which formed part of the festival, featured the menace of the plastic water bag (pure water sachets), the unhygienic singeing of butchered animals at slaughter sites and draining their blood into water bodies and the erosion of houses built along some coastal areas of the Greater Accra Region.

Films were also shown on the shortage of toilets, with many people jostling in a densely populated area to free themselves in a toilet built over 50 years ago and problems with landfill sites, among other environmental threats.

The platform was also created for discussion on environmental issues which, for the first time, attracted stakeholders from the oil and gas industry.

There was also a show that featured fashion and other materials made from recycled items such as dry cells, bottle tops, corn cobs, pieces of clothing which could otherwise have become a threat to the environment.

Dr Owusu said there had been an increase in environmental education since the festival began seven years ago.

He expressed the hope of more participation in the festival next year and announced that winners of the film competition would be sponsored next year to take part in a global competition abroad.