28th November, 2016
What is LAWMA’s recycling Bank all about?
Before we start talking about recycling bank, we need to know what recycling is all about. Recycling has to do with changing waste into usable goods, which is, you are changing the form the waste is and make it usable. I will divide waste into two, organic waste and inorganic waste. You can also say degradable waste and non-degradable waste. The organic ones are the ones that can decay like leaves, food you eat and so on. The inorganic ones are things like plastic, nylon, bottles and from these waste we can get lots of things. You can get fuel from inorganic waste; you can recycle them into plastics and other utensils. The fact that we pick waste and dump it makes it difficult for us, but by the time we start to turn them into organic; one, it reduces the amount of waste that goes into the dumpsites; two it helps the economy of the state because when more goods are available for use, more money comes in, so it will bring economic growth to the state. Please remember the 3 ‘Rs’-Recycle, Reuse, Reduce, that is what I am referring to because when we collect, we move them to the dumpsite, by recycling them, we are reducing the number, changing them into another form, we are reusing them and the whole process has to be recycling. Let me chip in that every human being that generates waste is supposed to be a waste manager. When you use things and you want to throw away the waste, you must throw it away in a form that those who are coming to collect it will find it easy to collect. Recycling has to do with sorting, in the advanced society, what they do is that you will see them putting plastics together, bottles together, everything, they sort them into their different classes. Unfortunately, we don’t do that here now, we are doing serious advocacy for that here now. It will start from different homes to sort their wastes.
As a matter of fact, I was at a conference, an Italian delivered the paper, he said in their country, they have different days for different forms of waste; maybe on Wednesday they will go and collect glasses, Tuesdays, maybe for bottles; they made it easy for themselves. That is why we are going round and telling people that we should cultivate that habit. There are so many challenges, an average Lagosians believed that anything that comes from government should be free, so people are not paying and waste management involves very huge capital. I can authoritatively tell you that the state cannot single-handedly finance waste management, so there must be private entrepreneurs who must be ready to partner with government and this is what the present administration in Lagos State is doing, bringing those who have the substantial amount of money and are ready to go into waste management business. If you have been following the trends of event in the dailies, we have advertised for investors to come and partner with the state government.
The recycling bank, when we took off around October last year, we noticed that recycling wasn’t that much an in-thing in LAWMA, so what we decided was to go headlong into it. Now, what we have done in LAWMA is to register those who are ready to go into recycling business; also know the type of recycling business they want to do, if you want to recycle plastic, utensils, we know; those who want to recycle inorganic waste to fuel, we know; so what we are doing is registering them and putting them into their categories and we are also assisting them. I give you an example, we have the wheel cyclers owned by Mrs Abiola at one of our offices, she started on our premises free, but with time, she cannot be making money and we fold our hands, we might end up charging, but we allowed her to encourage the recyclers. Recycling bank is just for people to make sure that they have the opportunity to change waste from one form to the other, which is waste to wealth. That is what it is all about, generating wealth from waste. Let me tell you that in Lagos today, we generate more than 14,000 metric tons of waste on daily basis. So, that is to say that there is enough waste for those who wants to go into recycling business, it is enough because we generate that much and also to encourage them because it leads to economic growth. The more goods, the merrier, that what is all about. We will continue to encourage these people to do the business; don’t forget that I mentioned earlier that government alone cannot do it and the more recyclers we have, the less the amount of waste on the dumpsites.
What are your plans for next year?
The plan of the state government as far as waste management is concerned is to take a big step to restructure LAWMA and we realized that government cannot single handedly finance waste management business, it has advertised for those who have enough money and capacity to go into the business to come forward and partner with the government and we are at that stage now. Simply put, the state government is restructuring LAWMA. As it is, the case of LAWMA is like that of a referee refereeing a football match and also playing the football match with the players. Our vision is that LAWMA should be a regulatory agency, we should be keeping directory of those in operation as waste managers, we should be monitoring them, making sure they are doing the job well, we register them and when they are not performing, we query and sanction them; that is basically what we should be involved with. Apart from doing that, government, public institutions like schools, hospitals, LAWMA can handle those directly, but the commercial side of waste management should be left for the public; those who have the capacity should go and do them and by so doing, LAWMA will be more formidable, will be more efficient and proactive. So, what we are looking for is the restructuring aspect of it government has embarked upon.
Some areas have not been reached by the PSP operators, what are your plans to reach those areas?
That is one of the challenges we are facing, let me address it headlong. You will agree with me that there are some areas that are just springing up in Lagos State like Ikorodu, it was not as it was before, it has expanded; Badagry and Epe are also in this category. We were not taken care of some of the new areas before, now we have to factor them into our job. There are great challenges, the roads to some of these places are very bad and not that motorable; you know we use very big trucks and our compactors are heavy, so to access some roads is a problem and even our small vehicles, when we send them there, there are problems, so in a nutshell what I am saying is that some of these areas that are just springing up, we have challenges but we are trying as much as possible to make sure that we access those places and do our jobs. Not only that, these bad roads destroy our vehicles and lead to constant breakdown of these vehicles. To worsen it, like they say every business has to do with money, people don’t pay, and I use this opportunity to appeal to them that they should pay for services rendered to them. I said earlier that the belief of some people is that anything that has to do with government should be free; it is not free and should not be. Some people invested huge sums of money into the business, the PSP, you can imagine somebody invested more than N100 million, won’t you expect that person to break even and make profit? So I am pleading with people to pay for the services rendered to them either by government or by private people. When you go to the market to buy things, you pay, so you should see this thing as if you are buying something; what are you buying? Good environment, that is what you are buy for clearing your waste, we are making your environment healthy for you and make it clean, so you pay.
What are the other challenges you are facing?
The challenges are numerous, we get to where we want to collect waste, some people will say we cannot do their job because they are using cart pushers. They think they have advantages for using cart pushers simply because they negotiate with them. But cart pushers create bigger problems for all of us because they either drop the waste in the canal or dump them where people will not see them and come back to collect money. That is a big challenge. Enforcement is another challenge, when we try to enforce, there are so many opposition. Our LAWMA policemen, people harass them. Our challenges are numerous; I mentioned earlier that our vehicles break down. Indiscriminate dumping of refuse by people is another problem. Recently, I was coming from Ikorodu one early morning, I was following this man, the car just parked and before I could say ‘Jack Robinson’ the man opened his boot and brought out bags of waste and dump them on the streets and he was going. You find these type of things all over the place, these create problems for us, they are challenges we face but with that, what we do is that any dark spots, we have to move in by clearing the wastes. We equally give back-up to the PSP operators, we call it intervention, it is a form of challenge, at times we feel they have done the job, but we found out that it has not been done at all, we have to call our men to do the job and every job you do involves money and the use of equipment.
Is there any new innovation you are introducing in LAWMA?
Yes, one, people should start sorting out waste from their houses, once you make it easy for those who are going to collect, you have made it easy for so many things to transport it to the dumpsite. I went to our dumpsite and what I saw amused me, I saw that lorries were taken things away from the dumpsite. We were dumping but lorries were taken those things out. So I asked what was going on and they said scavengers are coming to pick what they needed; it is recycling, they are picking what they need and they will go and sell them to those who need them to convert them to reusable goods. Do you know what we have done in LAWMA? We have started registering scavengers; these people even have association because what struck me was that these people were taken the waste out of the place, they were taken it for free and they were not paying. We have started registering them. Even the lorries that will go there to pick the waste, we register them and not just registering them but weighing the amount of waste they are taken away, they must pay to government coffer, it is a way of generating revenue. The moment we collect and take them to the dumpsite, it becomes government materials, I don’t see it as waste but as raw materials. Those who will come there to take it must pay for it. These are some of the things we have not been doing here before. We have also started registering recyclers and encouraging them to come. As it is, we are going to key into what government is doing in terms of restructuring the business, so there will be lots of new innovations in the coming year.
What about the plan to generate electricity from the Olusosun Dumpsite, is it still on?
The plan is still on, but as it is, we have see what government is doing in terms of restructuring, we are the one managing the landfills now but with the thinking and the way the government is going, we may concede to private people to run. We have been preparing for the raining season. Raining season is the worst season for waste management business, all the landfills will be marshy, making it very difficult for trucks to go and dump and this will affect the turnaround time for the business. We are preparing seriously. There is one good thing we have done in LAWMA, that is to characterize our waste. I can sit here and tell you authoritatively the type of waste you generate in your area or that the waste being generated in Mushin, Oshodi are different from the waste being generated in Victoria Island. In Oshodi, you are likely to find more of leaves, pure water sachets, and so on, but when you get to Victoria Island, you find different waste being generated. The waste they generate are from what they buy in eateries. We can tell you that plastics constitute 40 percent of their waste and for organic waste, it is about 55 percent, we have been able to come up with that. That is world standard because you must be able to know what you generate in different parts of the state. You must also be able to know what percentage each of those things generated are, this is what we have been able to do.
What advise do you have for Lagosians in terms of waste management and disposal?
My biggest advise for Lagosians is that they should pay for services rendered to them. Two, we should be good waste managers. Don’t just throw the waste in your house away anyhow; we should bag them for those who will come to pick them. Lagosians should not throw away things from their cars, they should imbibe very good culture. Commercial buses should have baskets for people to throw their waste and when the buses get to their park, they will empty the basket to the appropriate places. But throwing things out of their cars, things should change. They should change their orientation and make sure that they contribute to good environment that the state wants for people to live in.