Every minute 16,000 of plastic bottles is consumed and tossed in Nigeria. In one year, 2.5million tons of plastic wastes, approximately 150 billion plastic bottles is generated in Nigeria
Plastics are excellent and cheap packaging materials especially for food and beverage products, but in a country of over 200 million people without access to a decent waste recovery system, used plastics are a menance.
More than half of the homes in our cities do not have proper bins, and you can walk kilometers before seeing a proper waste receptacle on even the best roads, this glaring lack of waste recovery infrastructure is the foundation for Nigeria’s waste problem, not the production of these materials.
The irony of Nigeria’s waste problem is that, the waste we toss every year can easily be transformed into trllions of Naira. The 2.5million tons of plastic wastes can easily be 900+ billion naira revenue for the country in it’s loose form. When captured in this loose format, plastic wastes like PET, HDPE, LDPE can be crushed, melted and formed back into new products ready for the consumer or industrial market. However, it all starts with a decent post consumer waste recovery infrastructure like Ecobarter’s locally made reverse vending machines.
Reverse vending machines are automated collection machines that allow consumers to return used packaging waste materials like plastics, beverage cans and sometimes glass bottles in exchange for cash or coupon rewards. Next to a strong policy and legislation, countries with the highest recovery rates have established deposit return schemes that reward consumers for returning certain packaging waste materials post consumers. These reward-based collection systems are powered by infrastructures like the reverse vending machines aka ATM for plastics and cans.
The Informal Recycling Landscape in Nigeria
In the absence of strong legislation, public awareness, infrastructures and formal deposit return schemes in Nigeria, 90% of the recyclable waste materials that we generate in Nigeria are trashed on open dumps. And recovery for recycling is heavily reliant on an extensive network of informal waste pickers who salvage these recyclable materials from dumpsite or at best household trash cans.
Tens of thousands of waste pickers roam Nigerian streets and dumpsites, mining recyclable materials to sell to larger aggregators or formal recycling collection companies. This set-up, while vital in ensuring low-cost, low-energy recovery, often lacks efficiency and the waste pickers remain in a cycle of poverty.
Introducing Reverse Vending Machines (RVMs)
The aspirational lifestyle of Nigerians mean that even though 37% earn less than 100,000 Naira monthly, which is just about what a mid level waste picker recovers monthly, picking or sorting ones wastes to cash on is seen as a dirty task and to get more people involved, collection infrastructures need to be modern, instagrammable, and rewarding- all of which ecobarter’s reverse vending machine is.
Since launch in 2024, over 1million young Nigerians have shown interest in using the ecobarter reverse vending as seen on various social media platforms like twitter and tiktok (insert link to twitter viral post and tiktok post) and here are some benefits we expect reverse vending machines in Nigeria to unlock;
Benefits of RVMs in Nigeria
1. Mainstream sorting:
The current model of the RVM only accepts PET plastics and beverage cans. This means that users will be forced to sort these out of their wastes at the source/household level before visiting the RVM station.
2. High Quality Recycling:
As sorting at source becomes the norm, wastes recycled in the rvm are sure to be clean and uncontaminated. In the case of plastic bottles, these can easily be recycled back into food-grade plastics as opposed to those plastics mined from the dumpsite.
3. Automation and Efficiency:
From fuel for collection to resource for manual sorting, recycling collection as we know it in Nigeria is resource intensive and slow. Reverse vending Machines installed in malls, housing estates or parks mean that people can walk short distances to get their rewards while collectors save energy costs on doorstep recovery and a part of the manual sorting. Users get scan QR codes to add points to their wallet immediately and this shortens fulfilment time for users, leading to more participation and higher recovery rates.
4. Data:
RVMs are typically equiped with data collection, processing, storage and management systems to identify materials collected, quantity, weight and amongst other data that can improve waste management planning and policy development. Data from the RVM can help government do better while also helping private sector producers access the impact of their investments or recovery campaigns.
5. Wastes as a currency:
Our favorite benefit for introducing reverse vending machine in Nigeria is that it improves the use of wastes as a currency. The ecobarter platform allows users to withdraw their earned recycling points as cash into their bank account. From April 2025, users will also be able to shop partner products like health insurance, electricity units, airtime & data with their wastes, improving access to essential products/services to more Nigerians using wastes as a currency.
Until ecobarter built Nigeria’s first indigenous reverse vending machine, RVM adoption had been stalled due to the high cost of imported ones, the lack of a formal deposit return scheme and unclear policy direction, but that’s all in the past. The ecobarter reverse vending machines are cost-effective and designed to work with Nigeria’s private sector led, voluntary weight based reward schemes. With these machines, Nigeria is well on it’s way to unlock its trillion Naira circular economy market.
Visit ecobarter.africa/Rvm to learn more about the ecobarter reverse vending machines
