Announcing the 2022 Circular Lagos Challenge Winners
CEIP, GIZ, NCIC, and Challenge Owners Companies award innovators addressing challenges surrounding the development of sustainable circular businesses.
Innovators are responding to the challenges that come with creating a sustainable and efficient circular ecosystem with solutions that make designing out waste a priority. The Circular Lagos Challenge 2022 asked individuals and groups from within and outside Lagos to proffer innovative solutions to six challenge questions provided by a number of organizations serving as challenge owners companies.
Winners of the Circular Lagos Challenge with Challenge Judges
The Circular Lagos Project was initiated by Lagos State in collaboration with the Circular Economy Innovation Partnership in December 2020 and the support of German Development Cooperation GiZ/SEDIN, German Development Cooperation, and the Enterprise Development Agency of the Netherlands. The Circular Lagos Challenge Finals which was held on the 23rd of March, 2022, saw 12 finalists engage in a final pitch to select the winners with the most promising solutions who will proceed into an incubation program during which they will receive educational input to develop pilotable prototypes of the solutions.
2022 Circular Lagos Challenge Winners
Winner & Runner-Up of the BASF Challenge Question
WINNER:
SUNDAY SHOLAKE – PETsPoint Technology Limited
Junkyard was developed by PETsPoint Technology towards solving a number of problems, some of which include: locating the nearest community collection points/recyclers, provision of adequate and accurate data for the recyclers with the aim of creating economic empowerment, financial inclusion for the underserved, and environmental sustainability. It is an integrated cleantech value chain social enterprise that collects all types of plastic waste with plans to recycle through polymer-sand composition and extrusion process into eco-bricks and other eco-products.
RUNNER-UP:
ADERONKE IHIEBALE – WestAfricaENRG
Already engaged in Door to Door Collection of wastes in estates as well as the mechanical separations of household mingled waste, this team carries out voluminous recovery from direct sorting from households and those from commingled waste carried out through their ultra-modern material recovery facility. This ensures that they are able to attain Zero waste in their operations.
Winner & Runner-Up of the Sweepsmart Challenge Question
WINNER:
TAIWO ADEWOLE – Wastexchange Limited
Their Innovation is termed WASTE2CASH and is geared towards ensuring that no single recyclable item found in Oniru Beach and Victoria Island as a community is left unattended to. To achieve this, they have decided to place a value on the various recyclable items and offer incentives to those who drop off the waste at their hub. Being in the business of door to door recyclables collection over the years has allowed them to secure strategic partnerships with LAWMA, LASEPA and LAMATA ensuring that they will be able to get rid of 50 tons of plastic waste monthly while engaging a minimum of 5000 households and other informal waste sectors.
RUNNER-UP:
OLATUBOSUN ABIODUN – TrashBank Recycling
Their innovation is tagged PROJECT RECLAIM. It involves five approaches towards addressing plastic waste pollution all geared at recovery and recycling for wealth creation. Two aspects of the approach involve the construction of customized PET Bottles Disposal Bins using recycled plastic materials and the construction and establishment of customized PET Banks.
Winner & Runner-Up of the Coca-Cola & GBF Challenge Question
WINNER:
DOYINSOLA OGUNYE – Mental and Environmental Development Initiative for Children
This team has focused on creating value through education, sensitization, beach cleanup, advocacy and recycling across communities in Lagos state for over 10 years. Their idea is known as RESWAYE. Their aim is to promote sustainable communities through waste management initiatives focused on recycling, sustainable packaging and marine liter reduction and increase the influence of women and girls through alternative income-generating means in their communities. They are positive that they are on track as their previous initiatives have prevented as much as 100,000 tons of PET bottles and plastic waste from getting into the marine ecosystems across at least 20 coastal communities.
RUNNER-UP:
MAYOWA ELEFIN – Maladase Ecoprenuer Management Limited
This innovator currently recovers 40 metric tons of PET monthly from the environment through a model called Smart Source Collection. Plastics are collected in this model, through the placing of kerbsides in strategic locations such as estates, higher institutions, corporate offices, etc. The aim is to replicate this model in all 37 local council development areas in Lagos state. He is certain that this process will ensure the recovery of 10,000 metric tons yearly. The end goal is to eventually achieve end-to-end processing of the PET bottles collected into PET flakes and finally clothes and ropes.
Winner & Runner-Up of the Nigerian Breweries Challenge Question
WINNER:
BABATUNDE ADEBAYO – Eco Circular Solutions Provider
This group is focused on the collection and purchase of waste papers and cartons through B2B players, which help to clean up the environment while creating values by recycling them to produce and provide affordable eco-friendly building materials. Their aim is to solve one problem to solve another problem (waste management and littering problem) to ease (high cost of building materials) by producing and providing affordable eco-friendly ceiling boards/tiles from waste.
RUNNER-UP:
OSARODE ODEMWINGIE – RDZ Laboratories.
Focused on paper waste, this innovator operates a mini recycling scheme in Benin City, where empty Pringles Packaging is collected from clients and used to create The RODOME – a simple light modifier for photographers, built from Empty Pringles packaging and the plastic portion of 20watts/30watts bulbs. As an incentive, the providers of this recyclable packaging material are offered creative shots. The product RODOME is also sold to other visual creatives.
Winner & Runner-Up of the FBRA Challenge Question
WINNER:
OLUWAGBENGA OLASHEDINE – Stylus-Simplex Design
Gain your waste is a robust strategy, employing circular economy to collect household waste for recycling brought forward out of a research on creating an efficient strategy to curtail the environmental pollution of land and water bodies in Lagos as a result of plastics and homemade waste. The plan contains a five-step strategy, one of which is the provision of a five-part compartmentalized bin with dozens of barcoded durable bags for collecting a wide array of waste types.
RUNNER-UP:
Mayowa Olasupo – Eko Carbon Exchange
The Eko Carbon team has been experimenting with a scheme that will improve recyclable material segregation and collection. They have done so by bringing an inclusive benefit scheme to all the value chains involved in the collection. Their innovation rests on 4 pillars; two of which are creating collecting apps to track each person’s contributions to plastics waste collections and linking recyclers to households or businesses.
Winner & Runner-Up of the NGN Challenge Question
WINNER:
JOSHUA ATTAT – Lyvin
This individual contender has had prior experience in the recycling sector e.g. converting all forms of plastic waste including plastics considered “unrecyclable” into furniture and building materials such as flower vases etc. He previously set up a prototype Black Soldier Fly farm to treat organic waste. He searches for plastic waste with a focus on “hard to recycle” or “unrecyclable plastic waste” such as plastic packaging bags, wraps & sachets and processes them into crates that can be used for various purposes including storage and transportation of insect-based products.
RUNNER-UP:
GABRIEL CLAUDIUS – EntO’rganics
EntO’rganics has been making use of insect technology to recycle wastes for the past 2 years in 4 southwest regions (Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, and Osun state) to tackle environmental pollution, which is the cause of so many ailments in the urban and rural communities by recycling their wastes into cheap sustainable feed for the livestock farmers around, thereby reducing the cost production and creating more opportunities for youths and women in said communities.
More updates will be provided with regards to the next steps for the winners of the Circular Lagos Challenge as the story unfolds.