More entrepreneurs are creating wealth from waste and saving the environment from devastation. They have also created employment for many. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
The waste on road sides in Lagos is enough to put most people off urban waste management. But this is not so for a group of entrepreneurs who see opportunities in waste collection and recycling.
They are poised to create business and employment opportunities for many in waste management.
Chief Executive, T.Cynthia Nigeria Enterprise, Mrs Cynthia Saka, is one of the women working in the industry. She has spent the last 25 years in waste collection and recycling. She has been in the business since 1986, when she was a student of the College of Education in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.
The business that she started as a start-up has expanded into a big operation run from Lagos and Ogun states; she has many employees.
Her business model is to find waste and turn it into something useful, for a profit. She specialises in the plastic waste.To get waste, she relies on contracts with businesses – to take away their waste, as well as individual consumers collecting and sending it in, in return for payment.They are collecting from dumpsites and garbage cans across the country. Her business has created jobs by partnering company suppliers, such as plastics and polythylene gatherers.
Through the business, Mrs Saka is changing people’s opinions on the value of recycling.
To raise awareness, Mrs Saka, also a member of the Ogun State Chamber of Commerce and industry is working other collectors and recyclers engaged in handling waste, to improve the business environment for operators in waste recycling.
She is ready to mentor young entrepreneurs, because thanks to her own experiences, garbage is the place to look for opportunities as the government and the people deal with the challenges posed by increasing waste products.
She sees opportunities across waste management, industrial treatment, wastewater and sewage, recycling, and sustainable packaging and believes indigenous companies stand to benefit from investing in waste recycling. Another lady in the industry is the Chief Executive, WeCyclers, Mrs Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola.
Growing up in Lagos, she had witnessed a waste epidemic with plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and other waste accumulated in streets and open gutters, causing flooding, disease, and stress.
Though she studied in the United States, Mrs Adebiyi-Abiola had this issue on her mind.
A graduate of Fisk University, Vanderbilt University, and MIT’s Sloan School of Management in the United States, she returned to launch Wecyclers in 2012. She deployed a fleet of cargo bikes in collecting recyclables from houses in poor areas of Lagos, in return for rewards.
She employed young people who pedal door-to-door on modified bikes that pull large carts with collection bags. They collect recyclables from subscribers’ homes and weigh them; subscribers receive points via text message for every kilogramme of recyclables. Points are redeemed for food and consumer goods, such as cellphones and kitchen items.
Recyclables are returned to one of Wecyclers’ two plants, where they’re sorted, processed, and bought by recycling companies to make mattresses and pillow stuffing, among other things.
Working with the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Wecyclers is determined to create more opportunities for people to explore waste collection and earn money and residents rewards to enable better lives and business.
Participants earn rewards that they use to buy up consumer electronics, such as cellphones, irons, and toaster ovens. The rewards programme is funded by the sale of the collected waste and through corporate sponsorships. With Mrs Adebiyi-Abiola, recovery facilities and trading networks for waste materials have emerged across the state.
Aware of the danger of disappearing income opportunities for the waste pickers, she is taken it upon herself to turn waste into sustainable employment for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
She is working to help waste pickers become authorised collectors.
She engages pickers to collect non-hazardous parts such as plastics and drink cases before delivering them to recycling facilities.Through innovative ways of communication, she aims to reach the next generation of environmental leaders.
A visit to her storage place revealed waste, consisting mainly of plastic bottles and packaging, sorted to be processed and recycled. The pickers collect it from the numerous bins throughout the city, from watercourses, gutters and local markets.
With her presence, collection and sorting of plastic waste is a lifeline for many families. As a result of her effort, more and more women have turned to collecting and sorting waste, a commercial activity that is likely to ensure their survival. She is delighted to provide employment for workers while cleaning up the city. The Wecyclers” lever towards sustainable social-economic change includes the
creation of new and stable job opportunities for younger generations in Lagos, totackle the high national unemployment rate.
At the moment, a network of collecting and recycling activities has developed, integrated in a value chain recycling industry.
Notwithstanding, she is determined to see waste collectors well remunerated. To her, a pile of garbage representsa means of livelihood and not something from which to turn away in disgust.
To industry watchers, Mrs Adebiyi-Abiola is a rising star and Wecyclers is a growing company that has the potential to change how Nigerians interact with garbage.
At the Pitch For Lagos event held at Co-Creation Hub, which involved 10 startups, including BudgIT, Mamalette, CallBase, Alle Capital vying for a $55,000 prize money funded by the Steve Case Foundation, WeCyclers was announced the winner after a competitive.
Her work with waste has attracted quite a lot of local and global attention. She has been featured on CNN and The Huffington Post among others. She is also a Fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation and a 2013 Laureate of the Cartier Women’s Initiative.