Bringing Sustainability Home

Looking at the Sustainable Development Goals and how expanded they have become, they may appear overwhelming and really challenging to plug into. However, one Non-Governmental initiative in Lagos, Nigeria has found a way to contribute to the achievement of not just one but two SDGs. The African Clean-Up Initiative (ACI) has been able to draw an intersection between providing education and building sustainable cities and communities, through its back2school campaign titled ‘RecyclePay’, that allows parents and children of Morit International School Ajegunle to pay their school fees with plastic bottles from the environment that have been sorted and cleaned.

For those who do not know, Ajegunle is one of the most popular ghettos in Nigeria. Notoriously known for impossibly high levels of poverty, crime and filth, adoption of the Recycle Pay Education Project by the school authorities not only helps ease the burden of paying term fees but also encourages guardians who normally would prevent their wards from going to school. The recycle company involved comes two times a week to collect items because most families live in make-shift slum houses with very little space for long term storage. When asked on the impact of the project, the proprietor of the school said that since the commencement of the program in 2018, not only have payment of fees greatly improved, but the children have also learnt to manage their waste and keep a cleaner environment. In that time, the school has also received other incentives including waste bins and more scholarships for the participating families.

This waste-for-fees system has not only been adopted in other schools in Nigeria but in other countries like India. Akshar Forum is a school founded in 2016 by Parmita Sharma and Mazin Mukhtar in Pamohi village in Guwahati. Their mission is to train underprivileged children to earn a livelihood by being responsible to the government. A few months ago, the school started the children on the task of collecting and segregating dry waste collected from the vicinity. In a locale where burning plastic to keep warm is a norm, the classes were sometimes engulfed in toxic fumes from the fires. .The students are involved from the start to finish of the recycling process with the idea to train them on how to live an eco-friendly life by repurposing the waste in different ways. The school recently implemented a new policy of students paying fees in plastic waste.

For communities like Pamohi and Ajegunle where the priority of most parents/guardians is how to send their kids to the streets to ‘hustle’, projects like these give these kids a real shot at an education whilst creating an awareness of the need to protect the environment in their young minds and hearts. To some, these changes might seem too small and inconsequential but just imagine if a thousand of such sustainable activities are scattered around the countries of the world. RecyclePay and Akshar Forum are the proverbial little drops of water that make up the mighty ocean of environmental sustainability which is here to stay. What little drops of beauty are you leaving in the environment around you?