Francis Nnachi, an entrepreneur, has called on the incoming administration in the country, at the federal and state levels, to key into plastic waste recycling to create jobs for unemployed youths and save future generations from the harmful effects of environmental pollution.
He also advised the citizenry, especially the unemployed, to stop looking for non-existent white-collar jobs and embrace waste to wealth movement for sustainability.
“Our environments are littered with polyethene terephthalate (PET) bottles seen as waste but to us, they are wealth because we recycle and convert them into end-products. Recycling itself meaningfully engages the unemployed,” Nnachi said.
Nnachi, the managing director and chief executive officer of Solid Waste Recycling Limited, Delta State, made the call in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay Sunday, shortly after he received fellowship and partnership awards from the Federal University Petroleum Resources Centre for Sustainable Development (FCSD), Effurun, Delta State.
The investiture, which held at the Nelson Mandela Gardens, Asaba, was among the activities put together by the centre to commemorate the centre’s 2nd anniversary and the United Nation’s 2023 World Earth Day with the Theme: ‘Invest in the Earth.’
Due to the perceived impending danger of PET bottles in the country, the centre narrowed the theme to: ‘Environmental Pollution: The Elephant in the Room,’ thus, Akpofure Rim-Rukeh, a professor and vice chancellor of the university in his message, told participants at the roundtable conference, to ensure the elephant was reduced to an ant.
Nnachi, who was a resource person during the training session organised by the centre, had told the trainees to “Think Recycling!”
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“Waste Recycling is a very big business and the joy of it is that the world is beginning to look into it. They look at it as problem but to us, it is not a problem. From various countries I am being called to come and help out – they pay me to talk about how to solve the problems caused by plastic wastes.
“In my company in Okpanam, near Asaba, Delta State, we move 8,000kg of PET bottles everyday. These are wastes recycled from Asaba metropolis and its surrounding environs. You can imagine the havoc the tonnes of wastes would have been wreaking on the populace if they were left to block water drainages, pollute the environment and the eco-system,” he said.
While calling on the participants and citizens to change their mindsets about waste and embrace the recycling as business, he urged Sherrif Oborevwori, the incoming governor of Delta State and other state governors to pay attention to waste recycling for a cleaner, healthier and safer environment as it has the potential of boosting the economy.
He also said that for that to happen, they should interact directly with stakeholders in the waste recycling sector.
“They should know that recycling is no longer a Nigerian thing but a global phenomenon. And since the United Nations is trying to make zero-waste environment, there is a lot of funds ready to be tapped from the UN which individuals cannot attempt unless they go through the state government.
“They (government) should try as much as possible to identify the real recyclers and give them all supports they need to attract the funds so they could put the required machinery in place and encourage recyclers.
“It costs about N300 million to establish a plastic waste recycling plant, thus it is capital intensive that a common man cannot embark on it,” he explained.
Gloria Umukotete, the South-South Coordinator of Women in Renewable Energy Association (WIRE-A) decried a situation whereby the company recycles PET bottles and only converts same into flakes for export, whereas it would have also been producing Industrial strapping belts, weavons and hair attachments as end products if the recycling plant had access to electricity.
Umukotete who is a member of Private Sector Advisory Group, Delta State Directorate of Sustenable Development Goals (SDGs) and also one of the recipients of the FCDS 2023 fellowship and partnership awards, called for government’s commitment towards the achievement of the global sustenable goals by providing enabling environment, the right policies, infrastructures, amongst other things.
