SLC-S29/W3-“Thinking and Ideas!| Seeing Problems Differently!”

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The Issue Waste Management and Urban Flooding.

One of such failures is solid waste management in Nigeria, particularly in its centers, like Lagos, Kano, and Port Harcourt. One-time and domestic waste products are likely to litter the streets and sewer systems.

Steps to Solve the Problem:
Decentralized Recycling Centres: The state government ought to collaborate with the tech startups in developing decentralized collection centres in the neighbourhoods whereby the citizens would be entitled to an incentive (in terms of cash/data credits) to attend the sorting and drop off waste.

Stricter Enforcement of Sanitation Laws: That we need more than Sanitation Saturdays. There should be frequent legal consequences of corporate and personal littering.

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Infrastructure Investment: wasting to energy plants. We do not have to leave refuse deposits in landfills like the Olusosun and we can use them to produce electricity to power local grids.

What is the reason why this issue still remains?

It continues to exist due to a breakdown of the social contract. Nigerians believe that when the state fails to carry out its most fundamental duties such as delivering water or protecting them, they have no civic duty to pay the same to the state. As a result, the environment turns to be the no man land.

We have also an aging logistics infrastructure. When individuals collect their waste, there may be weeks before the collection vehicles arrive because of poor roads or insufficient funds and the people may turn to burning or dumping their garbage in canals during rainy seasons.

The Most Misunderstood Part.

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The economic value of waste is the most misconstrued. To majorities of the Nigerians, trash is not a commodity, but it is dirt that has to be disposed of. We do not notice that the rubbish that is blocking our gutters is raw material in industries. Circularity is important in developed economies.

Waste management is not viewed as a resource recovery sector (profit maker) but as a cleaning service (cost). When we replaced the story about cleaning the streets with the story about harvesting plastic, the incentive to resolve the issue would be financial, which is highly influential in our society.

Shifting the Attitude: The Government will Do It.

The change, which I would like to make, is the separation of personal action and the overall results. It is believed that a single sachet of pure water on the floor does not count or that it is the duty of the government to resolve the drains. We should be heading to Collective Ownership.

The change of mindset must be the following: My drainage is my living room extension. The next generation of change will come when we cease to expect a macro instructor in the state house to wipe our doorstep and when we actually come to recognize that our micro-actions such as sorting our trash at home are the reason why the macro-catastrophe of our houses flooding may in fact never happen. It is on the transition of being a resident to citizenry.

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @pea07 @bela90 and @abdullahw2 to participate.