A walk down a street in any city in Nigeria would reveal a variety of solid waste materials such as vehicle parts, beverage packs, polythene bags and others with varied rates of bio-degradability. Daniel Obi writes that these waste materials eventually find their way into the drainage, waterways and dump sites with undesirable immediate and long-term consequences for both human and environment.
Managing non-biodegradable waste safely is crucial to preserving the environment and protecting life forms on the planet. Environmental activists advocate three elements of environmental stewardship as it relates to wastes, that is, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
The three elements apply to consumers and product manufacturers alike, but none is popular in Nigeria, where the general approach by citizens and some unscrupulous manufacturers is to toss waste materials onto the streets, dumpsites or water body.
Regrettably, in spite of long-running efforts by municipal waste management authorities, solid waste collection and disposal in Nigeria are still at very rudimentary levels across all cities and towns, including Lagos, which has been hyped as far advanced in dealing with this challenge.
The lack of a holistic and effective waste collection and management framework in our cities is compounded by the equal lack of adequate and reliable waste collection, sorting and disposal infrastructure. As a result, most areas, including the showcase cities of Lagos and Abuja have had to depend on a horde of indigent men, women and children struggling to eke out a living as ‘waste scavengers’ on the streets and dumpsites as the backbone of municipal waste collection and recovery.
In the last ten years, in particular, a new economy has gradually emerged from this form of waste collection and is now fast evolving with the entrance of an unlikely class of well educated men and women with an entrepreneurial mindset and varied business models. These latter entrants are increasingly integrating the former (the scavenger class) as the nucleus of their downstream supply chain and have gone a notch higher by venturing into various degrees of waste recycling activities.
Among these budding ‘wasteprenuers’ are Bilkiss Adebiyi-Abiola of Wecyclers Limited; Mazi Ukonu of Recycle Points Limited, and Funto Boroffice of Chanja Datti and, surprisingly, a number of them in this class are Ivy League educated.
Another interesting factor in this development is the fact that some manufacturing companies gradually own up to their responsibility to move from being a source of the problem (as waste generators) to being a part of the solution by way of waste recovery and recycling.
Before now, however, the few companies with conscience felt good just by installing effluent treatment plants in their factories to take care of their waste water (a regulation driven action) but felt no qualms about what becomes of their solid waste including product packaging once the waste matter or products leave their factories and warehouses.
This is the reason industrial waste materials and, especially, packaging materials including non-returnable PET bottles and other plastic packaging, could become the environmental menace there are today in Nigeria.
Taking the beverage industry as a specific example, nearly all beverage manufacturers including the breweries now use PET bottles for some of their products, notably water and soft drinks as well as malt drinks; and it is said to be the fastest growing beverage packaging option.
This explains why the bottle PET is, perhaps, the most visible item on our municipal and even rural waste landscapes. The beverage industry has recognised the need for a platform for industry collective action to support the efforts of environmental and waste authorities to deal with the challenges posed by PET bottles and their other packaging materials; and the leading companies are already coming together as the Nigerian Beverage Alliance for this purpose.
This commendable development was disclosed recently at a forum in Lagos where NESREA, the national environment regulator, met with key players in the beverage industry on the mandatory waste buyback and recycling policy which has been in the works since 2009 for all industry sectors. At the forum, beverage industry market leader, Coca-Cola showcased its pioneering work on PET bottle to fibre recycling in Nigeria, which it said was started in 2005 in partnership with a private recycling plant operator, Alkem Nigeria Limited.
According to Clem Ugorji, Coca-Cola’s director of public affairs and communication, his company took the voluntary decision to invest in developing a framework for a sustainable PET bottles recovery and buyback scheme at the point where it was considering extending its soft drinks packaging to PET bottles. The company subsequently approached Alkem and offered some strategy, including a long term buyback subsidy arrangement, which encouraged the former textile company to get into the recycling business and has helped it to operate sustainably, transforming over 1 billion discarded PET bottles of all beverage brands into synthetic fibre as raw materials for the local furniture, building and other industries.
Arumugam Ramalingam, Alkem’s chief operating officer, who represented the recycling company at the event said “About 22 million waste PET bottles per month are being recycled currently, which has resulted in a cleaner environment and a reduction in landfills. Since 2005, 38,000 metric tons of PET has been recycled and converted into polyester fibre, sheetings, food and non-food bottles and containers and Geo Textiles”.
Recognising the power of partnership as it cannot solve the problem alone, Coca-Cola reached out to its peers in the industry and eventually succeeded in attracting four other companies that share its commitment to sustainability, i.e. Nigerian Bottling Company Limited (its bottling partners); Seven-Up Bottling Company Plc; Nigerian Breweries Plc and Nestle Nigeria Plc that together constitute the core of the Nigerian Beverage Alliance.
Ugorji said Coca-Cola’s long-term vision is to evolve a self-sustaining recycling economy in Nigeria and the company has pursued this vision with a three-prong strategy.
“The first step for us was to create a proof-point for packaging recycling in Nigeria, which was achieved through the partnership with Alkem. Secondly, to build a coalition of beverage companies on recycling, and this was achieved in 2012 when we signed an MoU with the current members of the Nigerian Beverage Alliance to partner on the recycling initiative.
And ultimately to leverage the industry coalition to build a sustainable nationwide recycling economy which will be achieved through the Nigerian Beverage Alliance as a Producer Responsibility Organisation for member companies in the food and beverage sector.”
The commitment of the member companies of the Nigerian Beverage Alliance attracted accolades from NESREA. Lawrence Anukam, director-general, commended the group’s exemplary support for and commitment to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programme in the country.
According to him, the Nigerian Beverage Alliance is one of only two Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs), along with Resource Renewable Limited, currently recognised by NESREA as EPR implementation platforms for their respective member companies.
The salient question is whether we are now seeing the beginning of a final solution to the waste management problem in Nigeria. It remains to be seen whether this momentum will be maintained by the NESREA, the companies involved and the wastepreneurs to rid Nigeria of the menace of poor waste disposal and management practices.
With companies standing up to take responsibility and an elite class of young entrepreneurs smelling good money in the waste business, one can dare to hope that there is a silver lining in the horizon on the matter of waste recovery and management in Nigeria.
