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Goal #15 mainly focuses on promoting change throughout our ecosystem by protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing forests. This goal stands out to me because I think biodiversity loss including pollution and climate change is a huge problem especially since it leads to declines in plant and animal species.

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One fact from the SDG website that caught my attention was how by 2030, they are trying to ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems. I never really thought of specifically mountain ecosystems that needed work.

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Goal 15: Life on land - The Global Goals

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Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

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Life on Land is important because it is crucial for resources like clean air, water, food, etc. While it is important for human life, it is also key for providing economic benefits along with cultural benefits. This provides support for the well-being of the population!

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I started to think deeper into problems that affect all around the world surrounding Life on Land like climate change, deforestation, pollution, etc.

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According to the United Nations, climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. This includes burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests which release carbon dioxide. Climate change has a greater impact on the world than most people realize.

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Pollution also goes hand in hand with climate change since it is a huge contributor. The main categories of pollution include air pollution, trash pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, etc. While all forms of pollution affect the world, I think plastic and trash pollution are definitely among the most significant problems.

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Pollution is defined as the introduction of any contaminant substance or form of energy to the natural environment that can lead to a detrimental environmental impact.

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This is when I started to wonder where in the world was the most impacted by specifically trash pollution. From my research, I found that Nigeria created about 3.5 million tons of plastic each year. It is definitely a major difference compared to other places around the world.

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Plastic Crisis: The Most Polluted Countries in the World

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Wondering which countries have the most plastic pollution? The impact of plastic goes beyond borders, but here are the nations bearing the brunt.

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To further my understanding of plastic waste, I decided to watch a TED talk which gave me insight on single use plastics and how they later break down into micro. I enjoyed learning more about the process of plastics getting broken down and how in depth it was.

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Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez: The problem with plastics -- and how they're changing the environment

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Plastics are everywhere -- they're in our favorite electronic devices, they package our food and insulate our homes. Today, the total mass of plastic is twice the total mass of all living organisms on the planet, and it's starting to change the processes that allow the Earth's climate system to work.

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A few reasons trash pollution is such a huge problem is because of poor management, human activities, and lack of process to proper waste management. Unfortunately, these can all contribute to excessive waste in landfills and can also result in long-term environmental harm.

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How Our Trash Impacts the Environment - Earth Day

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By Austin Downs, Richard Acevedo and Kennedi Humble Due to the mass amounts of unsustainable, human-generated waste entering our environment, the detrimental effects of pollution have continued to negatively impact numerous ecosystems around the world. Different types of waste, such as microplastics…

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There are many areas with trash pollution, but I'd like to focus more on West Africa.

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Nigeria is set to ban single-use plastics in government offices which is a major issue for the country. Within the next five years of this policy, they expect people to find alternatives.

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Nigeria to ban single-use plastics next year

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Nigeria on Tuesday announced a ban on single-use plastics in government offices as a prelude to a nation-wide ban set to begin in January next year, a move that could stir a storm in a country hugely dependent on plastics.

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From this article I learned that almost 80% of plastic waste is poorly managed in West Africa's coastal zones. Cost of plastic pollution is estimated between $10,000 and

$33,000 per tons. This is a major problem because when plastic waste is burnt in fields, it is difficult for plants to grow and for seeds to germinate. It can also affect wildlife which can cause them to die.

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“Our treasure is dying”: the West African coastline in the fight against plastic waste | WACA

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“These bags are part of the five million plastic bags that the people of Dakar use every day before throwing them on the street”. With his strange outfit made from plastic waste collected from the streets, Modou Fall, known as Mr Plastic, has been working for years to raise awareness of plastic pollution.

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I learned that only a small percentage of landfills in Southeast Asia are sanitary landfills which provide low-cost management. Incineration is about 80-102 USD per ton and sanitary landfills are about 10-45 USD per ton. The current recycling rate is below 50% because of poor infrastructure.

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Frontiers | Plastic waste and microplastic issues in Southeast Asia

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Plastic pollution on lands and oceans is a pressing environmental issue to date. The pilling up of waste accumulation has caused severe irreversible impacts…

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From this article, I learned that Latin America generates a total of 541,000 tons of waste daily. The problem isn't the amount of waste but how it's being managed. By teaming up with corporations, they are able to ensure proper and efficient disposal.

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The final destination of solid waste is emerging as a critical challenge to solve in Latin America. Though collection services cover 85% of the region's urban areas - relatively high by global standards - countries are faced with gaps in their ability to properly manage such waste beyond just collection.

Around 45% of this waste ends up in inadequate disposal sites such as landfills, which contaminate soil, water bodies and air.

Latin America generates a total of 541,000 tonnes of waste daily, roughly 1 kilogramme per inhabitant, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). World Bank data shows that the region is among the lesser producers of waste, compared to other world regions. The problem is not the volume of waste in itself, but its management, says Jordi Pon, UNEP's regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Across the region, inadequate management of waste has brought negative impacts on the health of populations and the environment, but has also meant missed opportunities for the adoption of circular economies - systems that seek to minimise waste and maximise resource use by reintegrating waste material back into production cycles.

Given the scale of the problem, large-scale responses from national governments and cities are likely to be needed. Some of them are, indeed, moving in this direction; Dialogue Earth looks at five projects in countries across the region that are seeking to improve waste management and encourage more sustainable practices.

Argentina: Sustainability and solidarity via recycling

In recent decades, the verb cartonear has emerged in Argentine Spanish to refer to the act of collecting cardboard and other recyclable materials from the streets to be sold on. These waste pickers are known locally as cartoneros. The country's economic crisis of 2001 sparked a surge in the number of people involved in this line of work.

The growth in the activity has led to the formation of a number of representative organisations, including the Federación Argentina de Cartoneros, Carreros y Recicladores (FACCyR). It brings together cooperatives from across the nation that organise locally to improve members' working conditions and promote more efficient recycling practices.

One such affiliate of FACCyR is Dignidad Cartonera - "dignity for cartoneros " - founded in 2017 in the city of Rosario and with over 150 active members. Founding member Mónica Castro, herself part of the generation that became unemployed in 2001, explains that she and her neighbours "decided to create our own source of work, which was to go out and collect cardboard".

In 2019, Dignidad Cartonera collaborated with the local government on a pilot programme to prevent the contamination and soiling of collected recyclable materials, increasing their sell-on value. While its members previously focused on more generalised, city-wide collection of materials, the pilot created a door-to-door service in Industrial, a neighbourhood in west Rosario, through which cartoneros demonstrate to residents how to correctly separate recyclable and non-recyclable waste.

The materials collected from the street arrive daily at a warehouse managed by the cooperative's members, from which they are sent to various recycling businesses. By teaming up with other cooperatives that are part of FACCyR, they are able to amass a large quantity of waste, secure greater collective bargaining power, and seek fairer remuneration for their work.

Among other goals, Dignidad Cartonera hopes its work will translate collective action and solidarity into advances for sustainability. "We want to inspire others to follow our path, demonstrating that it is possible to create a fairer and more sustainable world for all," says Juliana Muchiut, the cooperative's coordinator.

Chile: Blockchain helps tracing and trust in recycling

More than 140 million tonnes of plastic pollute aquatic ecosystems, according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). In Chile, the Atando Cabos project collects plastic waste from aquaculture, such as nylon nets, polyester ropes and plastic trays, and transforms it into reusable materials. Throughout the process, it uses blockchain technology to ensure the transparency and efficiency of its recycling operations, thereby building trust throughout the value chain.

The project's founder, Michel Compagnon, is the commercial manager of a company specialising in plastic injection moulding. He says the project started after a trip to Patagonia in 2016, where he found large amounts of plastic waste, and dozens of fishing lines polluting the region's fjords. He recalls feeling, as someone working in the plastics industry, that it all "wasn't rubbish, but valuable raw materials that could be recycled."

The Atando Cabos team works with locals, including fishers, to collect this plastic waste in southern Chile. Its collections are then shipped to a local port and processed in a factory in the capital, Santiago. There, they are given a new life, transformed into other products such as pallets or fruit crates.

The initiative incorporates blockchain technology, which can guarantee that registered data on items is secure and inalterable due to its structure of linked and encrypted "blocks". Each journey of a piece of waste - from collection to production of new material - is documented and logged as a record on an online ledger, and blockchain is used to verify each stage it takes in the recycling process.

This blockchain ledger can be accessed by product users through scanning a QR code on the product, allowing all actors involved in the value chain to follow the materials' journey and ensure that waste is handled in accordance with established environmental and quality standards. Compagnon says he was driven to use this method of verification to provide easily understandable and accessible proof that the products are made from recycled material.

The project, which in 2019 won an award recognising green initiatives in Latin America, reports that it enables the recycling of more than 2,300 tonnes of waste per year.

Brazil: Turning waste to energy in Rio

In a vast city such as Rio de Janeiro, where over half of the waste generated is organic, sustainable waste management projects are vital. One such project is an organic waste processing plant maintained by the city's public municipal cleaning company, Comlurb. The facility, located in the city's northern neighbourhood of Caju, processes 250 tonnes of such waste per month, turning it into biogas and organic compost. It was the first of its kind in Latin America when inaugurated in 2018.

The plant uses a process called biomethanation to transform organic waste into biogas and subsequently electricity that powers the facility. The process also enables the plant to produce organic compost for use in various urban agriculture projects, as part of the UN-funded Carioca Vegetables programme. Comlurb's compost has its own name - Fertilurb - and has been presented by the company as a " super fertiliser " due to being produced from "very segregated organic matter", it claims.

Comlurb's project coordinator Bernardo Ornelas notes that the initiative was the first "selective organics collection programme" in the city, and was initially launched in municipal schools and supermarkets.

Together with the Inter-American Development Bank, Comlurb is also studying how to expand the recycling of organic waste in Rio de Janeiro and scale to process and eventually transform up to 150 tonnes of organic waste into biogas and compost per day. The project is expected to be realised in three years.

Uruguay: Laws against e-waste

With 14.8 kilogrammes generated per inhabitant each year, Uruguay has the highest per capita production of electronic waste in the Southern Cone. Studies by the country's environment ministry attribute this phenomenon to the correlation between e-waste generation and gross domestic product per capita, with Uruguay being the regional leader in both aspects.

Specific legislation on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in particular is crucial because such refuse represents one of the fastest-growing physical waste streams. Regulation is required to assess its evolution, outline effective policies, limit its generation, prevent illegal dumping, promote recycling and create jobs in the recycling sector. But until 2023, only five countries in Latin America had WEEE-specific regulations.

Given its high levels of waste, progress in local waste-management policies has been particularly relevant in Uruguay.

In June 2023, its environment ministry signed an agreement with the municipality of its capital, Montevideo, and the recycling cooperative Volver a la Vida to expand the recycling of WEEE. The agreement allows the cooperative, which previously only focused on bulky waste, to also manage e-waste. The municipality provides the premises and collates the waste, while the cooperative is responsible for the repair of products that can be salvaged, and disassembly of devices to recover useful components for reuse. This aims to foster a circular economy, as well as social inclusion, by employing and training people in vulnerable situations as part of the recycling cooperative.

The national government is also reportedly working on legislation that specifically regulates the management and treatment of WEEE, building on the Integrated Waste Management Law that was passed in 2019, which is currently being signed by ministries before approval.

The initiative with Volver a la Vida is in line with the principles of Preal, a Latin America-wide e-waste recycling project which encourages reductions and proper disposals of such waste. The project also pushes for extended responsibilities for producers to ensure proper management of e-waste, said María José Crovetto and Gariné Guerguerian, consultants from the environment ministry, which is contracted as part of the project. Such responsibility could entail manufacturers funding collection and recycling programmes, or designing easier-to-recycle products, for example.

Ecuador and Peru: Grassroots recyclers app

Improving waste management and promoting inclusivity in recycling in Ecuador: these were the goals leading to the creation of ReciVeci, an app and platform that facilitates collaboration between citizens and grassroots, self-employed recyclers. Today, the app is available in the cities Quito, Cuenca, Guayaquil, and in 2023 began its expansion to Peru.

"ReciVeci was born out of the need to solve two problems: the generation of solid waste that is not being used, and the situation of grassroots recyclers," explains Sofía Baque, the platform's partnerships and community coordinator. The app allows citizens to locate nearby waste pickers through an interactive map and arrange a collection of the sorted materials at the user's home, ensuring a direct, clean and safe transaction. This allows users to get to know their recyclers, "which creates a bond that fosters regular deliveries and a relationship of mutual trust," says Baque.

The app, which began as a voluntary and collective project, obtained seed capital of USD 10,000 from investors after winning an urban entrepreneurship challenge in 2018. This funding enabled the development of a new version of the app, which was "more interactive and which allowed us to consolidate ourselves as a start-up", Baque adds.

In addition to connecting waste pickers with citizens, ReciVeci's platform is gamified, and users can accumulate points and redeem them for prizes, encouraging the public to recycle. The app also provides users their metrics, helping them measure and quantify their own impact on waste management.

Asked about impact figures, Baque says that, to date, they have recovered 150 tonnes of waste and have 2,000 waste pickers registered on the app. Lorena Gallardo, the initiative's founder, recently told the Forbes Ecuador podcast that they have recovered 200 tonnes of recyclable material and, according to her own calculations, avoided the emission of 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

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Five ways Latin America is tackling its waste problem

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Nearly half of the region's waste ends up in landfill. We meet groups finding fresh ways to stop the flow, via recycling apps, blockchain, waste-to-energy plants and more

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This article talks about how Europe is improving their ways of recycling more and landfilling less. It also talks about how products that end up in recycling bins need to be sorted out separately. The European Economic Area (EEA) has published data and analysis on waste prevention efforts and corporations.

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Europe is generating too much waste — and not enough is being recycled. The EU is working to create a more circular economy, among others, by preventing waste and improving waste management. At the same time, there are goals to reduce waste’s burden on health and the environment, and to keep valuable resources in the economy.

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The Lagos Waste Management Authority has partnered with many organizations to find new ways to collect waste. "Wecyclers" encourage people in low-income communities to properly recycle. After daily rounds, they sort and bag the trash.

https://www.tea-after-twelve.com/all-issues/issue-01/issue-01-overview/chapter2/lost-in-waste/

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Lost in Waste: Lagos’ new recycling methods

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If there is one thing the megacity Lagos has more than enough of, it is rubbish. Mountains of garbage, to be more accurate, for the city produces ten-thousand tons of waste each and every single day. New creative waste management methods are uregently needed. The latest in the project treasure chest is “Wecyclers”, a fleet of cyclists with specially designed bicycles (wecycles) that act as mobile recycling collection centres.

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Founder Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola talks about her experience of leaving America to help fight against plastic waste. This made me think of how determined she was to fight for a change far from her home. I believe powerful efforts like this help change the world!

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Meet the Woman Behind the Largest Waste Management Company in West Africa - AfroTech

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The premier tech, investing, and wealth-building platform for the Black community

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I think I'm starting to become more interested in the organizations that help recycling and Trash Pollution in Nigeria. I want to focus on recycling efforts that help fight waste problems.

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Pros:

-locally manufactured cargo bikes

-reward-based system

-helps clear drainage channels

Cons:

-social impact over profit

-roads causing operational challenges

-no other organizations working with them

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Nigerian social enterprise weighs in on benefits and drawbacks of grants and venture capital

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Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Wecyclers? What do you do and how do you serve people at the base of the pyramid? My name is Olawale Adebiyi, and I am the CEO of Wecyclers, a social enterprise that engages people at the bottom of the pyramid by helping them capture value from their waste. The world has a massive waste crisis. Over a billion people live with the waste that they produce on a daily basis and cannot find means to dispose of it. This can cause issues like malaria and disease, as well as other challenges. We work to understand how they deal with their waste currently and we provide incentives for them to recycle and sort plastics, cardboard, paper, and aluminium from organic waste. We go to their household to collect the materials. We then take it back to our facilities and process it. We sell it to recycling companies that add value and make finished products from it. We use the revenue that we generate to provide incentives for people to continue giving us waste. Workers at one of Wecylers’ facilities. Photo Credit: Wecyclers How is your company different from others in your field? If you look at the waste management sector, we are more focused on the community and people at the bottom of the pyramid. Other waste companies charge a fee to pick up waste, but ultimately they don’t really care what happens to that waste. Their goal is to take it from point A to point B. Wecyclers is committed to both ends of the spectrum. We are committed to helping solve the poverty issue, which is about 80% in Nigeria. We are also committed to ensuring that the recyclable materials that are being generated don’t end up sitting in dump sites or the ocean for the next thousand years. What were the biggest challenges that you encountered when developing your business model? We have encountered a lot of challenges in the process of running our business over the past seven years. Initially it was funding and making people understand why we were doing what we were doing. People thought we were crazy. People thought we were going to fail, but we stuck with the programme. We stuck with our vision and we kept pushing forward, and we grew as a result. Now the challenges that we are facing are being able to scale and grow our company to a level where it’s highly profitable because as a business you want to be profitable. We want to put our profits back into the communities, the industry to create jobs and also to help give the workers, especially in the waste sector, a better life. Wecyclers aims at giving its employees a better life. Photo Credit: Wecyclers How are you funded or how do you finance yourself today? We won a lot of pitch competitions initially. We applied for a lot of grants. We got some, not all. We’ve been lucky enough to partner with some very good organizations like Unilever and DHL that have been very good partners for us and supported us in our struggle. This is how we’ve funded ourselves and survived up to this point. We’ve never collected any kind of loans from banks because we can’t afford to and our company doesn’t have the balance sheets to support taking loans. Now, we have actually just closed on a major investment with a strategic partner. That has increased our capacity. We hope to take more capital to grow and ultimately build a facility to make our own products. What is the difference between getting grant capital and venture capital? I think the biggest difference is autonomy in some ways, because once you begin to raise capital from investors you have to work with the investor on understanding their goals and making sure that your vision is aligned with theirs. We’ve been able to be selective about who our investors are. I don’t just take any money. I really focus, first and foremost, on understanding if they are aligned with our mission. And if they are not, then we are not going to do business. We have had to turn away a lot of money because we don’t just want to look for it in the conventional private equity space. We want somebody that really believes in our mission and wants to help solve the problems we are driven by. Do you feel that it’s easier to get grant funding than to get venture capital? Yes, I believe so. I think it’s easier because even though your odds of getting awarded grant money might be lower, you are able to have a much more sustainable business if you’re successful in securing grant funding because it is more “patient capital.” This allows you to do more work. How are expectations from donors different compared to the expectations of commercial investors? It’s pretty straight forward. A donor doesn’t really care about your returns over a period of time. They’re more focused on your impacts and how much you’re doing to help solve the problem. An investor wants to take back 18 to 20% in five years. Is it easier or more difficult to navigate financing options other than grants? It’s more difficult. One of the things that we have seen is that there’s a massive disconnect, particularly in West Africa, between funders and companies that are working in this space, particularly social entrepreneurship. There’s a lot of investor money out there for social entrepreneurship but they’re just not finding their way to these small entrepreneurs. A lot of the reason is because people all worry about risk. Risk is something that is driving away investors and Africa is a risky place. West Africa is a little more risky. Lagos is probably the riskiest place to invest in Africa today, so investors are very scared to put their money there. Having an unknown commodity pushes investors away from investing in this space, I think. What we’ve tried to do is be very open about the work we do to be a known commodity, so investors feel more confident about investing in us. Have you also ever considered impact investment? That’s a very touchy subject because impact investors can claim to be impact. I think the proof is really in the pudding. All the impact investors I have spoken with want the same returns as the conventional investors. They want 20% in five years. I don’t think I have met anybody yet who says, “You can keep my money as long as you want and just keep doing good stuff.” What are your plans for the future? To be the largest recycling company in Africa. We are part of the Fair Plastic Alliance and in partnership with OxFam, our goal is to engage stakeholders, primarily beverage companies, to create a more fair and equitable supply chain. One of Wecycler’s waste collectors with his vehicle. Photo Credit: Wecyclers We are also building plants in the community so that we can increase value and return that value back to those communities and the workers in the plant. That’s the future we want for recyclers. We are looking to raise about a million dollars in the next twelve months. Then, the next phase will require an additional four million or so. Ultimately, we are looking to have about a $10 million plant in Lagos that makes bottle-to-bottle recycling. In the past year we have increased over two-fold in terms of our collection volumes and our team size, and we are continuing to grow every day. Thank you.

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This article highlights that by not taking care of the planet, it harms health, the economy, and the environment. One thing that caught my attention were the details about harmful chemicals being in plastics and their potential threat to human health.

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Uncollected waste and open burning leading causes of the plastic pollution crisis

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A new study shines a light on the enormous scale of uncollected rubbish and open burning of plastic waste in the first ever global plastics pollution inventory. Researchers used A.I. to model waste management in more than 50,000 municipalities around the world. This model allowed the team to predict how much waste was generated globally and what happens to it.

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I think I want to research RECYCLING which must be addressed to reach SDG Goal #15. I will focus on WEST AFRICA and TRASH POLLUTION SOLUTIONS. I want to research this because I think it's interesting to find out ways people around the world are helping their communities.

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What are the key factors contributing to the increase of plastic pollution in Nigeria?

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What are the possible effects and problems that can arise from excessive collecting of plastic in Nigeria even with the help of Wecyclers?