Mottainai engages experts to brainstorm on ways to end open dumping of waste

Mottainai Recycling Ltd, the Oyo State Waste Management consultant, has hosted a webinar to commemorate this year’s National Environmental Sanitation Day with the theme: ‘Promoting Sustainable Waste Management for a Healthy Environment: Stop Open Dumping.’

The virtual event which took place on Wednesday focused on sanitation and hygiene, with a call to end the practice of open dumping among residents in Oyo State.

A number of experts in the field of environment and waste management, as well as members of the public participated in the webinar.

“Waste management is a behavioural concern, and the place of education cannot be overemphasised,” Deborah Fadeyi, Chief Sustainability Officer at Mottainai Recycling Ltd and moderator of the webinar, said.

Keynote speaker at the webinar was Dr Debisi Araba, a public policy and strategy specialist and Visiting Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

Going through a history of environmental sanitation campaigns in the country, Dr Araba said that merely providing more information to people does not ultimately change their behaviour or attitude, except the information is specifically aimed at attitude change.

Dr Araba explained that there is an evolution in the process of waste management, adding that waste management is everyone’s business.

One of the panelists, Mayokun Iyaomolere, founder of Plogging Nigeria, said organising cleanup exercise is a means of bringing people’s consciousness to the need to dispose waste properly.

He said his organisation had organised such cleanup exercises across a number of cities in Nigeria.

The National Environmental Sanitation Day is a day set aside to increase the awareness of the importance of sanitation and hygiene as an effective  way to prevent diseases, save lives and ensure effective sanitation delivery services, as well as meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 and 6 by 2030.