Ingenious ways Nigerians are saving environment, solving unemployment through arts, craft

With the global call to cut carbon emissions in order to address issues of climate change, NCHETACHI CHUKWUAJAH writes on how individuals and organisations are saving the environment by turning waste into beautiful works of art, while creating sustainable employment for others.

The duo of Ramota and Abiodun Oladejo had, out of passion and desire to acquire a skill, gone to learn tailoring in 2012 and 2016, respectively. They got enrolled in places where clothes were made in bulk every day.

Worried about the amount of textile waste their individual workplaces generated daily, they started thinking of how to make the waste useful.

“At the end of every day, we would pack two sack bags full of waste and dump them into the landfill. But I thought to myself, what if there was a way for us to turn these wastes into something valuable because I don’t like wastage,” said Abiodun, a student of Mathematics at the National Open University of Nigeria, Ibadan Study Centre.

This continued until 2019 when they started researching environmental sustainability, recycling and up-cycling of waste. Then came Dr Abigail Badejo, a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. The trio founded the Green Fashion Factory where textile and plastic wastes are used to create beautiful products.

Waste, waste and more waste

The Oladejosconcerns are not far-fetched considering the volume of waste generated in Nigeria and globally. A 2022 result of the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policys Environmental Performance Index, which measures the number of plastics a country releases into the ocean in a given year, shows that Nigeria is among the 30 worstcountries in waste management, scoring 12.7 out of 100.

The World Bank estimates that daily, each Nigerian generates 0.51 kilogramme (kg) of waste. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)reportsthat Nigeria generates 32 million tonnes of waste yearly, 2.5 million tonnes of which are plastic. With an annual population growth rate of 2.4 percent, Nigerias total waste is projected to reach 107 million tonnes by 2050.

The World Bank also stated that global municipal solid wastestandsat 2.01 billion tonnes and is projected to increase by 70 percent to reach 3.40 billion by 2050. The Bank noted that 33 percent of this waste is not managed in an environmentally safe manner. In 2016 alone, the worldgenerated242 million tonnes of plastic waste only (2.4 trillion plastic bottles), which is an equivalent of the weight of 3.4 million adult blue whales.

There are implications

Not only do these wastes cause environmental pollution, but they are also a huge contributor to climate change. When solid wastes are dumped in landfills, they emit methane, a powerful Green House Gas (GHG), while decomposing. Methane is responsible for more than 25 percentof the global warming experienced today. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, methane, due to its structure, traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 80 times more harmfulthan CO2 for 20 years after it is released. Carbon dioxide is also naturally produced when anything rots.

Increased release of GHGs such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere through human activities like indiscriminate waste disposal slowly warms the earths surface, causing a change in its climatic condition.

The concentration of key GHGs have increasedand are more abundant in the atmosphere than pre-industrial years.Nigeria, with 492.44 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, (MtCO2e), accountsfor 1.01 percent of global GHG emissions as of 2014.

This also puts Nigeria on thelistof one of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries. Already, the country is experiencing the impacts of climate change including flooding, rising sea and temperature levels, drought, desertification and food insecurity.

But there are efforts

By repurposing textile and plastic wastes, the Oladejos are doing their bit to curb environmental pollution. “Our products are from waste to wow! We turn fabric waste to art pieces, shoes, bags, and so on. Our target audience are art galleries, art collectors, middle and high income earners, schools, and so on,” said Ramota, who studies Statistics at the University of Ibadan.

“During our exhibitions, people are always surprised at the kind of possibilities we can come up with fabric waste. People always love our products,” Abiodun added.

So far, the factory, which is an off-shoot of Grace and Great Social Enterprise, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) focused on preventing human trafficking and girls’ empowerment, has held art exhibitions and training, won awards and grants.

Abiodun said, “We thought that rather than seeking funds every time for our organisation, why can’t we come up with something to make money from so that we will be able to fund the organisation and get paid rather than working.”

Jumoke Olowookere’s story

Jumoke Olowookere’s journey to turning waste to wealth is one she says started from her kitchen. The Creative Director and founder, African Creative Sustainable Synergy Hub, started storing the waste she generated from her kitchen in the hope that they could be turned to something of value without realising how global a problem her waste challenge was.

“For the first time in my life, I noticed the amount of waste that I was generating from my own kitchen. I was home on maternity leave and I had a lot of visitors. I started asking why we had to throw the waste away. Isn’t there something else we could do with the waste?

“Nobody could answer the question, and I felt the waste should not be wasted, but because I didn’t know what to do with it, I started collecting. The ones I had generated from my own space, instead of throwing them away as I would normally do, I would wash and keep them. In a few months, I had a whole room filled with different kinds of waste—tins, cans, nylons of different colours, cardboard boxes, snail shells and egg shells,” Olowookere said.

The founder of The Waste Museum is popular in many quarters as “Olowo Waste” because of her mantra of not wasting anything. “Waste is not waste until you waste it,” she often says. In her search for a purpose for the waste she had collected, she stumbled on an art and craft book in Lagos in 2011 that opened the vistas to the endless possibility.

During the summer holiday of 2011, Olowookere held a bootcamp, which had 33 pioneer pupils in attendance. It became the springboard for her venture into teaching arts in an international school for five years and helping 40 public primary schools within the 11 LGAs in Ibadan establish a playground before her 40th birthday.

Olowookere, through The Waste Museum, hopes to create a sustainable world without waste. “It looks very daunting, but we realised that our solution could make it happen. Our solution is our 5Rs and U —Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refuse, Repair and Up-cycle,” she said.

She added that “What we call waste and pollution today is what man has caused. And if man caused it, man must look for the solution. If everybody can reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse, repair and up-cycle their waste, we will not be throwing waste away like we do, because if we know what to do with our waste, it will not be a waste because we will be hoarding it.

“I have come to realise that waste is wealth, and waste can be explored to create functional, affordable, durable, and eco-friendly products that will not have an end of life; instead, they will have a continuous, circular life.

“Our model of the waste museum should not be focused on the waste that is generated alone. We should be focused on everybody getting back to the basics, which is, plants, animals and humans living together without generating waste and harming each other.”

Dagunduro’s ‘recycle arts’

The ingenuity and sheer creativity of paintings, sculpture and fibre works are the welcoming sight into Adeniyi Dagunduro’s art studio in the Oke Bola area of Ibadan.

He said his journey into arts started from his mother’s photography studio where he would go to after school as a primary school pupil to try his hands at recreating the images from the wasted photographs there.

This would later become his favourite pastime after school until he proceeded to secondary school and discovered there was a subject for his hobby – fine arts. His love for the subject made him leave the science class for the arts, where it turned out he was the only student offering the subject in his senior secondary school class.

In 2013, the Fine Arts graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, began his career as an artist, but not without constant reminders from his father, who thought he should have studied a more “rewarding” course.

Dagunduro first tried his hands on recycle arts three years ago when he made an art piece from waste generated from his studio. “That art piece didn’t stay beyond two weeks before I sold it. When I received payment for it, I was amazed that someone could pay for that ‘waste’ and said, so this thing is real. That was when I went fully into recycle arts,” he enthused.

“What triggered my interest in recycle arts is that I love practising and experimenting with arts; I don’t believe there is a particular way or medium for art. I believe we should experiment, explore and do something beyond what people are doing every day.

“Recycle arts is a way of saving the environment from waste. One beautiful thing about recycle art is that when all the junk come together, to make something meaningful, it will blow people’s minds. They look like junks until we apply creativity with the finished picture in mind, they will always amaze people.

“I believe people are beginning to appreciate recycle arts more than normal arts because they believe there is a lot of work and creativity behind them,” he said.

Providing sustainable employment for others

Through the work that Ramota, Abiodun, Jumoke and Adeniyi do, they are not only saving the environment, but also providing sustainable income for artisans to whom they outsource some of their works and their trainees.

“Our major impacts are on people and the environment. We provide free skills for girls, mostly from underserved communities. We go to schools to train them, talk to them about human trafficking and climate action,” Abiodun said about the Green Fashion Factory.

For Olowookere, the impact of The Waste Museum is in the amount of waste saved from landfills through the actions of her trainees.

“My target is to train two million youths by 2025 and to also empower 200,000 youths with skills because I realise that if they know what they can do with their waste and they are willing to venture, it can turn into a source of income.

“We don’t look at our impact in terms of how much they have earned alone, we look at it in terms of how much waste they have been able to save from entering the landfill. The idea is for them to come to the museum, see what can be done, then go back to their own space and do amazing things,” she said.

“I have a lot of people coming to learn from me. Also, parents are beginning to understand the place of vocational education while their children are still in school. I have 15 students currently learning from me,” said Dagunduro.

Taking action to save the environment

With the global call to curb waste and reduce GHG emissions, these climate actors believe that individuals must be intentional about reducing their waste by adopting environmentally-friendly behaviours.

“If we are intentional about taking care of nature, it has a way of giving back all the time. If everybody can be conscious of the decisions and the actions they take, then it is a climate action that can prevent this climate change that we are talking about.

“Every person, in their little corner can create a safe haven for themselves. Start each day with each waste that you generate. Be intentional and conscious of the waste you generate, how you use it, and what you use it for. Ensure that when they put a name or label on every waste, none of yours will be in the landfill,” said Olowookere.

For Abiodun, “It is high time everybody starts to take action in the little way we can. We should all start to be responsible inhabitants of the environment; it is ours, and if we keep polluting it, it will come back to haunt us.”

Ramat is also worried about life underwater. “When all these wastes get underwater, they terminate the living things there. We should not only think of life on land alone but also care about life underwater.

“We should all take responsibility. It starts with me and you. Every one of us will not necessarily be doing up-cycling and recycling, but you can assist those who are. For instance, you can decide to keep the wastes and give it to those that up-cycle rather than trashing them,” she said.

Dagunduro believes that awareness about the dangers of indiscriminate waste disposal and the potential of waste is low. “We should create more awareness and make people know that most of the things they are throwing away and consider not valuable can turn into something very meaningful. The government should also create a spot to keep all these wastes sorted into different categories so that people can know where to source recyclable materials and also create employment opportunities,” he said.

This report is produced in fulfilment of UNESCO and CIJ London Climate Change in News Media project facilitated by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development.