Oluwayemisi Eniola Lawal (ELP 2022) | Chief Operations Officer, Wecyclers Nigeria Limited, Nigeria
Wecyclers is a for profit social enterprise located in the heart of Lagos, Nigeria. Starting with a location in 2012, Wecyclers started with a small community in Surulere, Lagos, offering incentives in exchange for recyclable wastes.
Lagos is the most populous city in Nigeria with over 25 million people and about 100 persons migrating into the city daily. The city generates about 20 tonnes of waste daily and only 40% of that is handled by the state waste management authority that transports the waste to the dumpsites located in 5 locations across the state.
With about 12 tonnes of unattended commingled waste, someone had to do something. Wecyclers carried out a waste characterisation program and discovered that about 50% of the waste generated daily was recyclable, with a very large portion of it being plastic.
In 2014, I decided to switch careers from manufacturing to environmental advocacy, and after a series of interviews and conversations with the Wecyclers CEO, I joined the team as a customer engagement officer.
The Dream Team
At the last headcount, Wecyclers has about 100 direct staff members, with 80% of them identifying as women. The success of Wecyclers is largely dependent on the willingness and continuous show of commitment of the employees to work together to salvage the environment. Some staff members have been on the team since its inception and this is largely due to the open-door policy of the management, where everyone’s opinion counts.
Community Engagement
One story that I’d never forget as a customer engagement officer was a woman who came to the office crying about how her son had been sent out of school for not paying tuition. It was such a sad situation, but it was comforting to know that she had 11,000 points from recycling plastics and needed just 5,000 points to get her son back into the classroom.
After paying her the equivalent amount of her points, her smile brought so much warmth and fulfilment to all the staff members. At that point we all knew that we were not just saving the environment from the menace of improperly mismanaged waste but also saving people from the pangs of poverty.
One part of my deliverables was community sensitization, we’d go into communities with a team of volunteers and a band of musicians to gain attention and we would then talk about the various environmental issues that they were facing in their neighbourhood and how recycling could help solve some of those problems. Once they realised there was an incentive for recycling, they were excited and would register to become a part of the program. In turn, we would establish collection centres in their neighbourhood and evacuate based on demands.
As of 2022, Wecyclers has registered over 28,000 households for its program, collected over 10,000 tonnes of plastics, and opened 23 collection centres in 4 states in Nigeria.
As part of our continuous effort to increase community literacy and responsibility for the environment, we carry out clean-up exercises in neighbourhoods with support from our various partners. After which we establish a recycling collection point in the neighbourhood, so that they don’t have to throw their recyclable waste into drainages or drop off at the median of highways anymore.
Our Happy Customer
Our subscribers, who are mostly women from low-income communities, are a class of people who could barely survive as they were since many were either unemployed or single mothers.
Recycling with us has given them access to funds they could only have imagined and has helped them to carry out capital projects, improve their livelihood, and start their own businesses. The joy we see on their faces when they come to redeem their points for cash is one of the main reasons we have done this for the last 10 years.
Financial Inclusion
From our study we found out that about 70% of our subscribers do not have any form of financial inclusion. As the income they realise from recycling begins to increase to as much as $600 per quarter, it became imperative for us to give them some form of financial inclusion experience.
We have partnered with a couple of financial organisations, who have opened charge-free accounts and provided free debit cards.
Logistic
In 2012, Wecyclers started out with one cargo bicycle, barely picking up 100kg and always facing repairs because the chains of the bicycle weren’t designed for such loads.
In 2016, Wecyclers moved to using motorised-vehicles which had more space for picking up items from subscribers and could also navigate the narrow inner neighbourhood streets where most of our subscribers live.
We have since grown in our logistics from the cargo bicycle, to motorised tricycles, to large trucks and compactors.
Through the rank
Joining Wecyclers since 2014 as customer engagement lead has opened me up for massive growth in my career path in the environmental sector. I have interfaced with all forms of stakeholders, ranging from community members, to law enforcement agencies, government environmental bodies, manufacturers who use plastics for their packaging, community leaders, corporate partners, and investors.
I have learned to collaborate, lead, negotiate, and work around existing systems to fine-tune its activities and make system changes. I have also learned new roles on the job, including human resources training and development and Chief Operating Officer skills.
Having spent 6 years with Wecyclers, it has facilitated the pivotal moments in my environmental leadership career giving me the opportunity to learn the ropes right on the job.
More lands to conquer
Wecyclers is a beneficiary of many awards including the king Baudouin Foundation African prize award in 2019 and we also enjoy partnerships with top brands like Unilever, Nestle, and Dow, to mention a few.
In our tenth year, I’d describe it as the season of geometric growth, as we are opening up more collection centres, processing more recyclables alongside all forms of plastics, involving ourselves in policy formulations that would further encourage recycling in homes and public spaces, creating system changes that would promote proper waste handling and disposal, and creating more jobs while preserving the environment as much as possible.
We aim to open more community-friendly collection points for recycling, open up more franchised processing facilities and also open a processing plant that moves us up the value chain, so that we can provide more jobs and impact more communities.
Our vision is to win one community at a time and ensure that everyone is environmentally responsible in how they dispose of their waste.
