One of Nigeria’s leading environmental advocacy groups, #PickThatTrash on Monday, June 18, 2018, used the public holiday as an occasion to lead a group of young people for an educational tour to two recycling plants – Chanja Datti Recycling Limited, Area 1, and Environmental Expressions Limited, in Abuja.

The aim of the educational tour was to bring the average young person closer to the realities of waste management and recycling process in Nigeria. Welcoming the #TrashHaters to the Chanja Datti Recycling plant at Durumi axis of Area 1, Abuja, the CEO, Funto Boroffice, emphasised the global need to embrace recycling as a lifestyle. Ms. Boroffice also shared with glee how her recycling business has consistently empowered thousands of Nigerian women and youths, since inception in 2015.

Mr. Habib Ahmad, the Managing Director of Environmental Expressions Limited, took the group through the company’s entire process of recycling. From the collection process to sorting, shredding, drying, melting into pellets, blowing into new nylons, cutting, packaging, and the cycle continues with a zero-waste system. Responding to the government’s contribution towards recycling, Mr. Ahmad said: “The Nigerian government must put her mouth where her heart is. They must also create better funding options for startups and businesses in the recycling business.”

According to ’Seyifunmi Adebote, the #PickThatTrash lead team in Abuja: “Many young people in Nigeria see ‘Recycling’ as a theoretical concept and more like a foreign thing – that is not for Nigerians. The purpose of this tour is to properly educate more young people on the dynamics of recycling in Nigeria and furthermore to position them to explore possible ways of keying into the waste value chain in Nigeria.”

In recent time, #PickThatTrash has come into the limelight in Nigeria’s environment space because of her active social media interactions. Furthermore, the group has also led numerous community activities which involve hundreds of volunteers across Nigeria towards achieving a mindset change of cleanliness and environmental sanity.

This year’s theme for World Environment Day, “Beat Plastic Pollution” set the tone for the numerous conversations and activities around ways to beat plastic pollution across the world. While some African countries have been applauded for placing a ban on single-use plastic, Nigeria, on her part, is yet to pace up and work out modalities for the operationalisation of such policy which undoubtedly will have grave effects on her copious population.

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