TALKING about the modern waste management, the Managing Director, Lagos Waste Management Authority, Dr. Muyiwa Gbadegesin, has said managing the waste of 22 million Lagosians is not simply about removing what is unwanted, but about building a modern system that recognises that yesterday’s waste can become tomorrow’s raw materials.
According to him, the task is about building modern system that recognises that today’s informal actor can become tomorrow’s trained micro-entrepreneur and that a cleaner city is not only more liveable, but more productive, more investable, and more just.
Gbadegesin made these illustrations while dissecting the major shift from linear to circular economy to tackle waste management and environmental challenges in Lagos.
Speaking at a quarterly forum of the Property and Environment Writers of Nigeria (PEWAN), Gbadegesin described waste management in Lagos as not merely a technical service, but a daily test of how a megacity governs itself.
This, he said, affected public health, drainage, flooding, real estate values, investor confidence, transport corridors, climate resilience, and the overall dignity of urban life.
He spoke about what modern waste management entailed from systems design, recovery economics, source separation, informal sector integration, recycling markets, and the long-term transition from disposal to value recovery.
He said the future of waste management in Lagos will not be secured by one actor but a coordinated ecosystem involving government as regulator and system designer; PSP operators as frontline service providers; recyclers and processors as value-recovery partners; specialised waste managers for special streams; organised informal collectors as last-mile recovery agents; communities as responsible generators; and the media as educators, watchdogs, and interpreters of urban reality.
“If we continue to manage waste only as something to be collected and dumped, we will continue to chase symptoms. But, if we manage waste as a resource flow within a circular urban economy, we can reduce disposal pressure, create jobs, improve environmental outcomes, and build a more resilient city,” the LAWMA boss said.
Gbadegesin stressed that modern waste management ecosystem would require multiple categories of managers, each playing a distinct role.
“First, we need stronger recyclers, aggregators, and processors.
“A circular economy cannot function unless there is real downstream demand for paper, plastics, metals, organics, glass, and other recoverable materials.
“Collection without recovery merely shifts the problem,” he said.
To move from disposal to circularity, he pointed out that Lagos must keep strengthening the chain from households and businesses to aggregators, processors, manufacturers, and end markets.
According to him, specialised waste streams must be handled by specialised operators, noting that municipal solid waste is not the same as medical waste or construction, market, marine, electronic waste or hazardous waste.
He said that a serious city must manage each stream according to its own risk profile, logistics needs, and recovery potential.
Besides, he stated that there must be a need to pay more attention to organics, noting that in many urban waste streams, a substantial share of what is generated is organic.
“This has implications for odour, vector control, landfill pressure, methane emissions, and opportunities for composting or other forms of beneficial use,” he said
According to him, a circular economy in Lagos cannot be built around dry recyclables alone, saying that organics must be part of the strategy.
Gbadegesin said it has become important to rethink the place of the informal sector, suggesting that a more intelligent option is to train, organise, and incorporate informal recyclers as last-mile recovery agents, working house to house, especially for dry recyclables, before materials are contaminated by mixed disposal.
“Rather than sorting at landfill, they can operate upstream in the collection chain.
“This is where the idea of cargo tricycle-based collection becomes highly relevant.
“In dense urban communities, estates, low-rise neighbourhoods, and even many mixed-use districts, trained last-mile collectors using cargo bicycles can recover recyclable materials directly from households and small businesses on scheduled routes,” he said.
He emphasised that, if informal recyclers are to be integrated into the circular economy, they must be trained, registered, supervised, equipped, and linked to lawful material off-take systems.
“Training should cover health and safety, customer relations, sorting standards, route discipline, use of protective gear, record-keeping, and basic environmental compliance. “Their operations should be tied to defined routes, aggregation points, and reporting structures,” he said.
Again , he stressed the importance of citizen’s participation, saying that no waste management system can succeed in Lagos if it is conceived only as a government responsibility.
According to him, residents, tenants, landlords, facility managers, markets, institutions, and businesses must all be active participants.
