Green manufacturing for environmental sustainability: The hiccups for manufacturing companies in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT Environmental problems have become so profound that they require a concerted effort to fix them, but many manufacturing companies have failed to go green. This paper explores the challenges manufacturing companies (MCs) face in their efforts to have and maintain the best environmental sustainability practices (ESPs) in urban Ghana. The study involved 600 respondents selected from six manufacturing companies using a cross-sectional survey design with a two-stage sampling technique. The result showed that the challenges to environmental sustainability practices negatively relate to the socio-economic performance of manufacturing companies. These findings add to the literature on challenges to achieving environmental sustainability and contribute a social science perspective to the ongoing discussion on ESPs of MCs. This research is unique in the sense that studies on environmental sustainability and MCs have concentrated on the chemicals or pollutants but not on the polluter-behavior dynamics.


Introduction
The manufacturing industry has been described as the material basis and the main body of a country's national economy and reflects the comprehensive national strength of a country.Notwithstanding these goodies, the increase in mechanical manufacturing processes is said to be aggravating the world's energy, wastewater, waste gas, and residue problems (Richards, 2023;Tutu & Anfu, 2019).Environmental degradation and pollution assumed an alarming rate at the advent of the Industrial Revolution.Industrialization, through advanced manufacturing for that matter, was seen as a sine qua non for development and for that reason, industrial activities commissioned were not based on sustainable development (Akuoko & Bour, 2013;Jan et al., 2023).
This resulted in the massive destruction of our physical environment with its attendant effects.As a consequence, the modern world is said to be fraught with numerous challenges ranging from poverty, climate change, unemployment, and poor health as well as hunger and food insecurity (Adu et al., 2021(Adu et al., , 2022(Adu et al., , 2023;;Draghici, 2019).In the latter part of 2021, climate scientists put the world, particularly developing countries, on high alert to the realities and consequences of climate change (Adu et al., 2023;Draghici, 2019).Changes in the various ecosystems have already been detected faster than anticipated due to climate change.Climate change will also increase the water stress currently faced by some countries and even put the risk of water stress on those who are currently enjoying it.
These incidents that hit the world are but a few reminders that we have to get right the approaches to manufacturing to ensure proper healthcare, social protection, food security, and building resilient local businesses and industries and for environmental protection.
The impact of environmental degradation on Africa even looks dire.In light of this, Kohnert (2023), reechoed the statement by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that no continent will be as badly affected by climate change as Africa because widespread poverty severely limits the capacity to adapt to climate change.Kohnert (2023) added that up to now, many African leaders show limited awareness of the consequences of climate change.Climate change, together with human drivers such as deforestation and bushfires are threats to Africa's ecosystems.It is estimated that, by the year 2080, the proportion of arid and semi-arid lands in Africa is likely to increase by 5-8 percent (Bour et al., 2019;Change IC, 2014).
The impact of climate change or environmental degradation according to MESTI (2013), is felt by all in Ghana in the form of floods, drought, and increasing frequency of high temperatures.Furthermore, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in Ghana, an important greenhouse gas have increased significantly from 3927.80 kt in 1990 to about 9801.20 kt in 20079801.20 kt in (MESTI, 2013)).Methane emissions have also increased from about 7237.60 kt in 1990 to 8989.50.Emissions of particulate matter (PM10) in the country have not been stable; it increased from about 34.5 micrograms per cubic meter in 1991 to about 42.1 in 2001 but decreased again to about 24.5 in 200824.5 in (MESTI, 2013)).The country's water bodies have also had their share of pollution due to poor waste management and industrial discharges.The foundation upon which the conclusion has been drawn is that the environment of modern manufacturing companies (MCs) is less secure due to complex corporate operational impacts on such an environment (Jan et al., 2021;Mukwarami et al., 2023) (WorldBank, 2020), made a heartbreaking statement that environmental unsustainability may impair Ghana's economic growth.Environmental problems have become so severe that Ivory Coast and Ghana's Cocoa production is even under threat of collapse by 2050 due to unfettered industrial and mining activities (Barima et al., 2016).
It has been identified that several manufacturing companies discharge organic and inorganic wastes into the environment, especially into water bodies and air space.These chemicals include acids, highly toxic minerals, such as mercury or arsenic, or toxic organic substances.Such environmental injustice can have negative consequences such as rendering water unsafe for domestic use and even for irrigation purposes.The pollutants may enter the food chain and cause health complications for humans and animals alike (Ismanto et al., 2023;Jan et al., 2023;Masindi & Muedi, 2018).Ironically, these MCs submit their environmental sustainability practices and plans to the EPA as part of a mandatory requirement for their registration as corporate establishments (Bour et al., 2019).So, what has gone wrong?What are the challenges facing these MCs to the extent that they renege on their promise and responsibility?Is the problem financial or what?Is it because it is a mere requirement for incorporation?Or why have companies failed the test they have set for themselves?Given this, the paper explores the hiccups MCs face such that they are not able to maintain the best environmental sustainability practices (ESPs) in their immediate physical environment.These and others are the foci of this paper.

Literature review
A variant of political economy theory underlies this study.Literature has indicated that manufacturing companies should be blamed for their rapacious assault on the environment (Bour et al., 2019;Udemba & Nİ, 2022).For a simple reason, the manufacturing of goods was seen as a means to development without critically considering the environmental repercussions it would come with.The competitiveness in the corporate environment with the crosscutting demands consumers make on it has been enormous (Jan et al., 2023;Mukwarami et al., 2023;Udemba et al., 2021).A condition Schnaiberg referred to as treadmill of production which means an inherent need for an economic system to continually yield profit by creating consumer demand for new products through advertising even if this means stretching the ecosystem beyond its physical limits or carrying capacity.It is a variant of the political economy theory of Marx (Bour et al., 2019).This accounts for why environmental problems are prevalent in manufacturing areas all over the world and why a growing concern about ever-increasing environmental degradation due to industrial activities (Adu et al., 2020;Boso et al., 2022;Lena et al., 2022).Bour et al. (2019) revealed that the manufacturing industry has a dual impact on the environment unlike the extractive industry; the input receives raw materials from extractive and agricultural sectors and the output receives waste and disposes of waste as pollutants.It is a hard fact that we are now living in a challenging world (the world referred to as the juggernaut world-a rapidly changing world steering toward crushing via environmental degradation) that requires some changes in the way we manufacture; i.e. moving from non-green to green manufacturing (Jan et al., 2023(Jan et al., , 2023)).Green manufacturing (environmental awareness manufacturing) is described as a modern manufacturing mode that takes into account the consumption of material resources in the manufacturing process and the impact on the environment in the production process.It promotes the sustainable development of human society and the development of the circular economy model in the modern manufacturing industry (Gyamfi et al., 2022;Tutu & Anfu, 2019).
Therefore, the environmental sustainability practices (ESP) of MCs are of much value for the continuous survival of the environment in which these companies operate (Jan et al., 2021;Jum'a et al., 2021).Hence a global call in many international forums on the need for companies especially manufacturing ones to operate within universal guidelines on the adoption of best environmental sustainability practices (Fahad et al., 2022;Jan et al., 2021;Piyathanavong et al., 2019).So, that interest in conducting research using manufacturing companies as a unit of analysis is an academically viable business.Several forces have been identified to contribute to this interest in finding out the challenges to environmental sustainability compliance by manufacturing companies while ensuring better socioeconomic development.Literature has revealed that pragmatic measures have to be taken to manage production processes at the production sites to ensure that manufacturing companies improve their environmental sustainability practices.Some analyses according to Kenton (2022), reveal 'greenwashing', meaning that many companies do not adhere to their declared policies but also violate a host of laws.More importantly, much of the research on environmental sustainability or degradation has been on the chemicals or the pollutants but not on the polluter-behavior dynamics (Jum'a et al., 2021;Udemba et al., 2021).
Following these environmental problems are a series of 'whys' regarding the challenges facing MCs in their effort toward environmental sustainability that researchers have not adequately addressed.Bour et al. (2019) have early on indicated that MCs are by law required to submit their environmental protection plan (EPP) or policy before their incorporation.By this requirement, one would expect that every manufacturing company would comply with environmental sustainability practices.Ironically, companies failed the test on the implementation of ESPs, the very thing they professed to apply at the workplace (Bedu-Addo, 2022;Boatemaa Darko-Mensa & Okereke, 2013;Ng et al., 2022).Something is missing, that social fact, that explanation is needed urgently using scientific research.Though many studies have been done on how companies comply with the environmental sustainability guidelines in Ghana, there is very little scientific knowledge available in the area of challenges to the environmental sustainability practices of MCs in Ghana (Moses et al., 2014).Hence, this study is aimed at filling this lacuna in the literature on 'why' most companies fail to keep up with environmental sustainability practices.

Sampling setting
Ashanti region, which is the target region of this study, is centrally located in the middle belt of Ghana and lies between longitudes 0.15W and 2.25W, and latitudes 5.50N and 7.46N.It is also the most populous region with a population of 4,780,280, representing 19.4 percent of the country's total population (GSS, 2012) and a population density of 148.1 persons per square kilometer.More than half of the region's territory lies within the wet, semiequatorial forest zone.
The target industrial sector of this study was the manufacturing sector in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.Manufacturing companies in the Ashanti region were chosen for this study due to their abysmal performance in environmental sustainability practices assessment according to the EPA (Boatemaa Darko-Mensa & Okereke, 2013).There were other economic sectors in the region whose activities also affected the physical environment badly and needed to be studied, the EPA (2012) report indicated that manufacturing organizations in the Region grossly failed to meet environmental sustainability standards (Boatemaa Darko-Mensa & Okereke, 2013).Ironically, these organizations profess to have environmental sustainability practices.
For this study, only those companies rated red by the EPA in 2012 were selected except CBC, Ghana which was selected even though it was rated satisfactory.It was meant to serve as a control group because it had best practices.Moreover, since these organizations were concentrated in Kumasi, five of them were selected from within the Kumasi metropolis and one was selected from Juabeng.They were selected based on the major manufacturing industries in the region that they belong to.The organizations were clustered into industries engaging in wood processing, chemical production, agrobusiness, food, oil, and drinks processing.The classification was done following the advice of the public relations officers of EPA in Kumasi.From these Clusters, the study companies were then selected randomly from a list of 14 companies listed with EPA-Ghana for environmental assessment in 2012 (Refer to Tables 1 and 2).

Study design and sampling
The study forms part of a larger research that assessed the effects of environmental sustainability practices on the growth of manufacturing companies in the Ashanti region of Ghana.The study adopted an organizationbased survey design by which six manufacturing companies owing to their 'how' and to 'what' extent of sustainability practices were selected.Again, the study focused on contemporary issues such as green technologies and environmental sustainability practices of manufacturing companies hence, survey design was desirable (Creswell & Creswell, 2017).According to Nsowah-Nuamah (2005), surveys are the systematic means of obtaining standardized information about the behavior, attitudes, and any other characteristics of a population being studied Survey designs make use of large populations which are reduced step by step to representative samples (Courtoy et al., 2023;McGrath et al., 2022).A sample that bears all the characteristics of the population it is representing (Courtoy et al., 2023;Creswell & Creswell, 2017;McGrath et al., 2022).Such steps involve the identification of the unit of analysis, specification of target and study populations, sample size determination, and sample selection.All these processes were embarked upon so that sampling errors would be minimized.Nevertheless, determining a sample size that would be equally representative of the population was also difficult.As a result, factors such as the population homogeneity or otherwise, a fraction of the population constituting the sample and lastly the desired precision (margin of error) were considered in the determination of the sample size.Given these factors, the margin of error for the determination of the sample size was 0.02 and the proportion of the study population likely to agree with the statement that environmental sustainability is a challenge in the company was assumed to be 60% (0.60).The figures were then substituted into Moser and Kalton's formula for determining sample size.The formula is given as: where P 1 = estimate of the proportion of the population with a particular characteristic.SE p = acceptable margin of error n= sample Therefore, the sample size for the study was 600.
The fractional approach suggests that any fraction of the population that is 10% or more is deemed large enough to be a representative sample, especially if the sample is scientifically selected (Grafström & Schelin, 2014;Omair, 2014;Robinson et al., 2021).The sample size of the study was about 42.4% of the total study population of 1,416.For this reason, the sample size of 600 respondents made up of the management, senior, and junior staff of the selected organizations is considered adequate for the study.Vivian and Maurin (2012), also support this argument by stating that statisticians have found that 384 is a magic number for many surveys even if the population size is infinite because it is derived from a 5% margin of error.This margin of error decreases as the sample size increases beyond 384.Therefore, this sample size is considered adequate to yield the expected result, especially, where the sample was selected scientifically using a stratified sampling technique.

Sampling technique
In the first stage, all the targeted MCs were grouped under the major manufacturing industries in the region that they belong to.They were companies engaging in wood processing, pharmaceutical, animal feed processing, food, and meat processing, drinks and beverages as well as oil processing.Cluster sampling was used to select the five manufacturing companies in the Ashanti region which were listed by the EPA as the worstperforming organizations in environmental sustainability practices.The remaining organization (CBC Ltd.) was purposively chosen because it was the only manufacturing company whose operations in the region were rated satisfactory.Therefore, its inclusion was meant to serve as a control group for the other five organizations.The MCs were thus selected based on the major manufacturing industries in the region that they belong to.As such each company selected represented a cluster of companies in the manufacturing sector with common environmental sustainability practices by the EPA specifications.
In the second stage of the sampling process, the proportional stratified sampling (Proportionate sample allocation) technique was used after clustering the manufacturing companies into wood processing, pharmaceutical, animal feeds processing, food and meat processing, drinks and beverages as well as oil processing.Akuoko (2008) has stated that when the population consists of several subgroups (strata) that are heterogeneous, it is often appropriate to use stratified sampling to cater to the variability in the population.It is a probability sampling design in which the population is first divided into homogenous strata and a sample is selected from each stratum.In stratified sampling, researchers first divide the population into sub-groups, and from each stratum, they select a certain number of sample units to form the sample.The mathematical formula below was applied to obtain the proportion of each stratum (each company) of the study population to constitute the sample.The formula for determining the sample allocation for each stratum in the sample was given as: Where Ni is the total population of each company, N is the total population of the six (6) companies.n is the sample size.ni is the sample allocation for each stratum (company)

Data collection
The process of gathering data for the model was done in two phases.Phase one was devoted to literature navigation and identification of relevant literature.The study relied largely on secondary data from the literature review.It applied a traditional critical review methodology which involves a systematic search (Lacey et al., 2011).Unlike a systematic review whereby users aim to summarise a field comprehensively, a traditional review uses a critical approach to established knowledge (Lacey et al., 2011;Rosenberg, 2020).The use of traditional critical review methodology set the preliminary research stage for asking questions such as Why is a massive violation of environmental sustainability practices by MCs?Why too many allegations of pollution against MCs?What are the challenges MCs face in ensuring environmental sustainability?The established knowledge provided a complete overview of the field.
The second face involved the use of two instruments to capture primary data for analysis.They were questionnaires and key informants' interviews.However, the main instrument used for the data collection was a questionnaire.The questionnaire was the only quantitative data collection instrument used and was designed based on the objectives of the study.The questionnaire was made up of open and close-ended questions.The close-ended question allowed respondents to answer the question by choosing from a list of options.The openended questions allow for flexibility in answering the question.It provided an opportunity for the respondents to provide their responses to supplement the responses provided in the close-ended questions.Finally, Likert scaled type of questions was also used to help measure variables at the interval level.Semi-structured interview schedules or protocols were designed to elicit information from the key informants to support the data from the questionnaire.Notwithstanding, these two major data collection methods, direct observation was resorted to in certain situations to collect data to confirm the data gathered from the administration of the questionnaires and the key informants' interviews.

Data analysis
It is noted that the kingpin of any scientific research is the accuracy of the analysis of its data (Rahman, 2020).In this regard, the questionnaire and the interview protocol were scrutinized by the authors to make sure that they did not have errors to influence the validity of the results.Editing data involves a critical examination of the raw data gathered from the field to identify errors and omissions and correct them to ensure that the data collected are accurate (Rahman, 2020).After editing the responses to the openended questions, they were then coded when the agreement was reached just as the responses to the close-ended questions had been.The coding process involved categorizing responses and assigning numbers to responses so that they could be put into one exclusive category.Coding was followed by data cleaning.Cleaning data involved a critical search for coding errors identified as being impossible and improbable based on the way the variables were defined.Hereafter, a carefully scrutinized coding scheme was developed.The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used in processing quantitative data for analysis.As a result, the variables and their coded attributes or values were keyed in for the SPSS software program to process them for analysis.Both descriptive and inferential statistical components of SPSS were utilized.Through the descriptive statistics results were presented using tables and chi-square, Pearson r as well as ANOVA were used to test for correlations and levels of significance.

Results and discussion
Challenges of maintaining the best ESPS and their relationship with the socio-economic performance of MCs.It is an undeniable fact that companies are faced with many challenges however, these challenges are not the same for every company.They differ in type, intensity, and context.Globalization, market pressures, technology, ethics, and social responsibility as well as industrial relations, stakeholder interest, finances, protection of the natural environment, and many others as challenges faced by companies in the contemporary socio-economic world as Guryanova et al. (2019), Mueller-Hirth (2016) proposed.In line with the above MCs were found to be confronted with similar difficulties as they pursue environmental sustainability objectives and practices.It is shown in Table 3 that some factors militate against the MCs in their effort to design and keep the best ESPs.They include recycling of waste, the high cost of maintaining or keeping best ESPs, leaders' lack of commitment to deploy resources, defective and ineffective installed technologies, and the view that the moral authority of EPA is compromised.
The data in Table 3 shows that lack of management (leadership) commitment to deploy resources to ensure the best ESPs was the biggest challenge that MCs had to battle with.This challenge had the highest mean (M = 4.0872; S = 0.85941) and comparing that mean with the grand mean of 2.9077, showed that it was of significance to the MCs.This challenge appeared to be the most serious of all since it had the largest mean with a relatively smaller standard deviation of (0.85941).It meant that scores were closely clustered around the mean.This challenge was closely followed by the view that the moral authority of the EPA to strictly ensure compliance with best ESPs was compromised (M = 3.9933; S = .51200).It also meant that a lot of respondents agreed with the statement that the moral authority of the EPA to enforce ESPs was compromised.This was a confirmation of the earlier findings by Vodounhessi (2006) and Amoaning (2006), though they identified it as the biggest challenge.It might be due to perceived corruption in the EPA, though not the focus of this study.This phenomenon implies that the entire workforce of the company will most likely see the whole complex system of ESPs as a scam and might not be committed to upholding them.
To probe this issue further and critically, the EPA boss was engaged in an interview in which she debunked the notion that their principles and standards on environmental sustainability had been compromised.She, however, admitted that her outfit was a human institution and as such was fallible.She rated the performance of the EPA concerning enforcing ESPs of MCs at five (5) on a scale of 1-10.It is also revealed in Table 3 that defective technologies resulting in frequent breakdowns of machines purposely fitted to protect the environment (M = 3.8356; S = 0.99440) were also a major challenge.Another major challenge was the high cost of developing and maintaining the best ESPs (M = 3.5503; S = 1.0904).It was inferred from the statistics, M = 2.5487; S = 1.269 that recycling of waste products was not a major problem for the MCs.The mean of this category of a problem (M = 2.5487) was less than the grand mean of 2.9077, meaning that the majority of the respondents disagreed with the statement that recycling waste products was a challenge.This statistic provided enough evidence to prove that recycling waste products was not a major challenge to most of the MCs.
The study also examined the relationship between ESPs and the socio-economic performance of MCs as shown in Table 4 to ascertain the impact of these challenges.
To conclude, the relationship between these challenges to ESPs and the socio-economic performance of MCs, a hypothesis test was run.That is, H 1 : Challenges of ESPs negatively affect the socio-economic performance of the MCs.The result of the test as shown in Table 5 depicted a significant negative relationship between these challenges of ESPs and the socioeconomic performance of the MCs.The null hypothesis was significant at 0.05 but in this test, the chances of committing a Type I error was 0.000 which was an indication that H 0 was insignificant and ought to be rejected at all costs.By so doing the H 1 : Challenges to ESPs negatively affect the socio-economic performance of the MCs was supported.

Conclusion
The study identified these challenges as setbacks to having the best ESPs in MCs: Lack of management commitment to deploy resources to ensure the best ESPs, the moral authority of the EPA to strictly ensure compliance with the best ESPs, defective instruments resulting in frequent breakdowns of machines purposely fixed to protect the environment, high cost of developing and maintaining the best ESPs and recycling of waste products Therefore, these major challenges of ESPs negatively affect the socio-economic performance of the MCs.The implications are that these conditions do not promote effective maintenance of the best ESPs in the company because of the high cost of procuring and maintaining the most efficient environmentally friendly machines.As a result, MCs are not able to commit enough resources to having and sustaining the best ESPs and among other things accounted for why many of the MCs failed the ESP tests in 2009 and 2012.This situation calls for strict monitoring and evaluation by statutory bodies such as EPA, and Ghana.As a matter of policy, it is suggested that policymakers such as the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) as well as the Environmental Protection Authority open discussions with the management of MCs on the proper ways to embrace green manufacturing for environmental management and sustainability in Ghana in particular and the world in general.The major limitation of this paper is that it is limited to only MCs in urban Ghana and that the findings might not have external validity beyond the study context.And again, it did not include mining and service companies considered as some of the polluters in in Ghana.

Table 1 .
List of selected Companies for the study

Table 2 .
Sample size for each of the selected companies Source: Authors' Construct.

Table 3 .
Item statistics of the challenges of having the best ESPs

Table 4 .
Item statistics of ESPs and socio-economic performance of MCs Source: Authors' Construct.

Table 5 .
ANOVA with Friedman's test of significance between challenges of ESPs and socio-economic performance of the MCs SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT