Worried by huge plastic waste adorning the nation’s beaches, ocean and marine environment, some groups of conservationists have called on the Nigerian government to urgently enforce the plastic ban regulations to arrest the situation.
Besides, the conservationists, who are from the Marine and Coastal Conservation Society, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research, Eco Restoration Foundation, FABE International Foundation and Wema Bank Plc, also urged the government to do everything possible to implement all policies regarding plastic waste management in the country.
The environmentalists, who converged on Navy Beach, Marwa, Lekki, Lagos, made this appeal during the 2021 International Coastal Cleanup, organised by Ocean Conservancy with the theme: ‘Connect and Collect’.
Some volunteers, numbering 82, involving adults and school children, who were mobilised to the scene, participated in Ocean Conservancy’s 36th International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), the world’s largest single-day volunteer effort to remove trash from local waterways, beaches, lakes and rivers.
The volunteers collected 283.3kg of trash from Navy Beach, Lekki , Lagos as part of the world’s largest single-day beach cleanup. The trash collected included human clothes, flip flops and millions of pieces of foam food containers.
According to experts, the most visible and disturbing impacts of marine plastics were the ingestion, suffocation and entanglement of hundreds of marine species, adding that marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fishes and turtles, mistook plastic waste for prey, and most died of starvation as their stomachs filled with plastic debris.
Speaking when interviewed, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research’s Chief Research Officer and Nigerian Coordinator for International Coastal Cleanup, Mrs Oyeronke Adegbile, urged the government to enforce the plastics ban, pointing out that lack of enforcement of the regulation was responsible for debris on the nation’s beaches.
Apart from this, she urged the government to look into how to control or regulate the production’s levels of industrial use of plastics in the country.
“We have the plastic ban that has been introduced in Nigeria, and it is not being enforced. If the plastic ban is enforced, you won’t even have single plastic on the beach.
“We need to look at control or production levels of industrial use of plastics; it has to be regulated. Nigeria is not a dump site for every other bad thing to go around. We need to stop the flow of plastics from the source.”
“Government can achieve this by putting in strict regulation in terms of plastic production in Nigeria. Government can ban some forms of plastics usage. We can zero the amount of plastic being used for production of things,” the conservationist, who is also from the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, said.
Adegbile said the essence of this year’s programme centered on raising the awareness among the locals on the need to clean-up the beach, pointing out that this would go a long way to help them develop the culture of environmental cleanliness.
She explained that her initiative had just finished the Marine Plastic Debris Campaign Project on Lagos› coastal beach , where beach clean-up, up-cycling and recycling programmes were held with women in the local community to equip them with the use of plastics to make fashion items.
“We are moving from beach clean-up to a circular economy where we have people pick their plastics, recycle them, up-cycle them, and convert to help their livelihood,” she said.
Since the first ICC, more than 15 million volunteers have removed nearly 315 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways worldwide
Another conservationist, Dr Toyin Olukale, wants the Lagos State Government to identify the number of beaches in the state, their usage and kind of waste being generated there in order to sustain clean-up programmes
According to her, from the waste being generated from these beaches, the government should look at the resources they could generate from them.
Representative of WEMA Bank Plc, Mrs Abimbola Gbejule, who is the Head of Corporate Sustainability Team, stated that beyond banking, the organisation is also looking at other things that could be done for the environment in order to have a better social system that will help humans to live well and live long.
To really get people’s cooperation in this assignment, she pointed out that the government has a role to play for the dwellers in the coastal communities.
According to her, government should look at the kind of dwelling units that could be put in place for locals to make them separate their waste, and work with recyclers and waste management agencies to actually pick-up their waste regularly.
“I noticed a lot of debris on the beach and dwellers in this community should have picked them up or separated their waste to have a better environment,” she said.
One of the officers of Eco Restoration Foundation, Mrs Stephaine Waniko, urged the government to bring out regulations on how people should manage the environment.
“One of the reasons for flooding is plastics. It is our waste. We need the government to sensitise people and encourage people like us because we are not funded by anybody,” she said.
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