Accra, Ghana – It is 5am in Accra. The chatter of weaver birds and the rasp of pied crows is gradually drowned out by “tro-tro” minibuses and old cars. Diesel fumes – and the pungent smell of refuse – rise in the air.
Ghana’s capital, home to almost three million people, is at the centre of the global plastic waste crisis. Waste picker Lydia Bamfo has been on the front line for 25 years.
As the sun rises, the 51-year-old mother of seven waits in her “office” – a lean-to shack outside a yard piled high with recyclable rubbish. A motor-tricycle bumps noisily down the unpaved road before pulling in.
Bamfo – hair protected from the dust under a white headcover – climbs in next to the driver, neatly tucking in her dress, before the pair zoom past the wooden shopfronts.
On a wealthier road, the tricycle pulls up at a house with high whitewashed walls topped with an electric security fence. A door opens, and a man in a dressing gown wordlessly slings them a bag of rubbish.
The tricycle jolts on, towards the outskirts of the city where the pollution eases up and banana plants sprout more easily. Along the way, Bamfo calls out to a small army of waste pickers with handbarrows, all harvesting the city’s endless crop of plastic detritus.
Returning to the yard to escape the fierce sun, she finds a waiting queue of young men and boys, each carrying mosquito-net sacks crammed with blue-silver plastic bottles, like fishermen returning from sea.