By Our Reporter
Recycling business sector has gained recognition over the years and in the face of the current harsh economy across the country, recycling is currently complementing several industrial survival in the country, NatureNews investigations has revealed.
Recycling of used rubber, iron and plastics can be regarded as the pain relief drug for survival of companies who re finding it difficult to import their needed raw materials for production due to the challenges in getting forex and high exchange rate of Nigeria’s Naira to US Dollar.
NatureNews can report that the sector now provide jobs for thousands of people across the the six geo-policical zones of the country, particularly in the state capitals and small towns.
In addition to supplying industries with raw materials such as rubber, iron and plastics, recyling is doing a great deal of intervention in safeguarding the environmental hazard and threaths posed to the environment by used rubber, iron and plastics.
Findings into activities of recyclers in Lagos the commercial hub of the country and Kano, the business hub of Northern part of Nigeria, showed that the young and the elderly, men and women, the literate and illeterates, have taken to recyling used materials such as plastic buckets, packs, bottles, kettles, jerry-cans, condemned irons including disposable rubber bottles.
Those who spoke to NatureNews at the popular Katangua arena near the Oke-Odo landfill site at Abule-Egba, Lagos, one of the numerous areas in Lagos State where such activities are carried out, said recyling of used items listed above is a source of living for them on one hand, as well as low and medium scale industrialists.
Mr. Oluseyi Olubunmi, a recycler within Abule Egba axis, said he and some of his colleagues had been in the business for almost two decades adding that it is a wonderful endeavour as more than 100 people within Abule-Egba area alone, earning a living and taking care of their responsibilities as head of families from being a recycler.
According to him, there are other recyling points in neighbouring communities within that part of Lagos where scores of people are also gainfully employed as recyclers.
”There are groups of recyclers around this area up to Oko-Oba and Agege because there are industries in Sango-Otta nearby where we sell our products to either through intermediaries or by the recyclers himself,” he said.
Another recycler, Akinsola Ahmed, commended recyclers for standing up to help industries that would have folded up for long.
He said the most important thing about recycling is that it serves two purposes: ”It created avenue for different kinds of people to have something doing; some after they have retired and have nothing significant doing or disengagement from their work places. It also created opportunity for those industries that would have by now shut down their productionb lines as result of the skyrocketted exchange rate, to remain in business,” he said.
In Kano, a densely populated city like Lagos, there are different categories of people in the recycling business. Starting with young men who roamed the metropolis and the suburbs within the city searching for used rubber, plastics, iron sheets and steel, to the small scale recyclers, recycling business is thriving across the country. Both in Kano and Lagos, women are involved in recycling separating used items supplied by waste pickers.
Surajo Musa, the chairman of the recyclers in Kaloma, within Dakata of the city, Kano, said there are over 250 shops of recyclers within Kaloma alone.
He said there were more than five other units within Dakata, where hundreds of young Nigerians are gainfully employed in the recycling industry.
According to Musa, the young ones goes out everyday in search for used household items that were thrown away by their owners. ”Some people sell what they are no more using to these boys who bring those items here and we use scales to weigh them and pay based on the quality of the items brought to us.”
He went on to explained that such items like used rubber bougth from these young Nigerians are recyled to manufacture another useful things.
He noted that many rubber products that people buy at the Sabon Gari market are, to greater extent, the products of recycler’s ingenuity.
Both in Lagos and Kano, including other parts of the country where recyclers operates, it was gathered that their major challenge was irregular supply of electricity.
Though they don’t hve any problem sourcing materials to crushed and these were in abundance, but regular power to use by their machines in ccrushing these used materials is a big challenge to them all.
However, recyclers are lamenting that over 70% of their profits are consumed by electricity used in running their machines. The high cost of electricity is what they all pointed out as what is killing recyling business.
They pointed out that in other countries where recyling is taken as a serious work, recyclers and industrialists spend less than 30% of their income on power.
In Kano, for example, Musa explained that the process of crushing used rubber, plastics and others to useable materials consume a lot of power.
The recyclers met with the authorities of the Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO), and a big metre was installed in their premises to ensure they continue their business without disturbing challenges.
In Lagos, Olubunmi corroborated Musa’s complained that the electric used in crushing the items which they recycled, consumed the major part of their profits.
He said the federal government should take acritical look into the issue of power generation and distribution as it affects Nigerians who are keeping the country moving with their creative work.
Interestingly, Malam Jamilu Ahmad, one among the Kano based recylers who operates in Dakata, said with the current economic trend, recycling business in the country is growing adding that some financial institutions in the country have gained confidence in what the recylers are doing and they were being granted soft loans to boost the business.