RECYCLING IN LAGOS

I thought I was going to begin this blog telling you about businesses I had already researched on over the past few months but for some reason I woke up today and all I'm thinking about is recycling. I have an environmental science career background and I have always been interested in conservation and wildlife but for some reason I haven't really explored the option of incorporating these passions into money! Hmm I find this quite puzzling!

So the fact is my home country is Nigeria and for most of the year (at the moment anyway) we live in Lagos. It is a bustling city with so much to do and so many people to serve, The problem however is that there is little structure for building any business. One has to structure their affairs around very peculiar circumstances. For example getting competent as well as honest workers is like trying to find snow in the Sahara! They come few and far between so one must think of innovative ways to protect your investment.

OK now back to recycling, there is so much waste around the place and in recent times the state government seems to be making an effort to make the place tidy, so where is all of it going. I know there is a lot of space for landfills but surely there must be a way for me to raise consciousness about recycling and set up a scheme to make it happen.

So far I have found an interesting link on starting a recycling business http://www.conservation.ca.gov/dor/crcp/recyclers/Documents/StartingARecylingBusiness.pdf
It has the general gist on how to begin a collection business but assumes that there are recycle plants in place that are willing to pay for the collected waste. To the best of my knowledge there is no working scheme to this effect but I might be wrong so I will definitely look into this.

There are so many materials that can be recycled ranging from paper to mobile phones. The crucial thing I guess is to identify possible end users that the recycled product will attract.