World Environment Day: Orange Cameroun engages in plastic waste collection.

The activity, which took place on Wednesday June 5, at the Banamoung neighbourhood in Akwa Nord, Douala V Subdivision, reaffirmed the company’s commitment to reduce hazardous impacts on the environment.

Officials of Orange Cameroun said the company had chosen the Day, set aside by the United Nations for stakeholders to lead public outreach, to raise awareness and taking action on the planet’s most-pressing problems, to show the world that they are fully engaged in environment’s protection.

"… we symbolically came to clean the banks of the River Wouri, which you can see have been littered by plastic bottles of every kind and have become a nuisance to the local population," Orange Cameroun Director of Institutional and Regulatory Affairs, Alain-Blaise Batongue, explained to reporters.

Going by him, for several years now, Orange Cameroun has been taking concrete measures to protect the environment.

However, in conjunction with World Environment Day, the company has resolved to launch the Orange Engage for Change programme.

As explained by the Marketing Director of Orange Cameroun, Yves Kom, the programme was designed to consciously involve employees in the fight against environmental degradation.

"We firmly believe that employee engagement is an essential key to meeting these challenges. The Orange Engage for Change programme enables each employee to devote three working days a year to projects with a societal impact," he said.

"We are doing this work with some 100 volunteers. This is because, the future of humanity matters to us and all the risks brought about by climate change. We believe that…if we can carry out little actions as such, the rest of the population can do same," the official said.

As the world commemorated this year's World Environment Day, WED, the focus was on land restoration, halting desertification and building drought resilience under the slogan “Our land. Our future” with hashtags #GenerationRestoration.

Experts say environmental degradation directly impacts human health. 

Air pollution, water contamination, and climate change contribute to a range of public health problems. 

Experts say World Environment Day is not just for those working in the environment sectors.

Orange Cameroun Managing Director, in a communique, stated that "our employees are not an exception and their relevance to the subject was seen as the banks of River Wouri was left free of plastic waste”. 

One of the Volunteers, Anne Estelle Nkoh noted that the activity was a life changing experience.

“Being here today gives me a feeling of fulfillment seeing that Orange is doing the needful to make the environment clean and better the lives of the locals…this is really commendable," Anne Estelle Nkoh said.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No3134 of Friday June 07, 2024