An NGO, Servelead Humanitarian Initiative, has tasked the residents of Kabusa community, a suburb in the FCT, on how to turn waste products to wealth creation and personal benefits.
The Lead Programmer of the association, Princess Alugwe, gave the advice on the sidelines of the association’s 9th Conference on Climate Change on Sunday in Abuja.
The event was organised in collaboration with Ecobarter/MEMZ culture under the International i-volunteer conference and supported by Social Good Fund, U.S.A.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference was organised to train and sensitize the residents on the devastating effects of climate change due to human activities.
The theme of the event is “Innovation for Impact Harnessing Volunteerism for Global Solutions”.
She admonished the residents that rather than littering waste products such as bottled water cans, polythene bags and other items, it was better to convert them to wealth and personal benefits.
Alugwe added that at the end of the training and sensitization, the participants should be able to convert such wastes to items like jewelries, hand bangles, necklaces and ear rings, among others.
She added, “This will no doubt go along way in reducing the effects of climate change because these wastes will no longer find their ways into our drainages, rivers and streams which in turn contribute to climate change.”
Alugwe stressed the need for people to take the effect of climate change seriously to enable everyone live in a better and conducive world.
She added, “We have been training participants in Nigeria and outside the country, particularly Botswana telling them that climate change is now a very big deal and there is a lot of plastic pollution in our environments.
“People don’t properly dispose them as suppose and these waste usually find their ways into our drainages, rivers, streams thereby, constituting to something else.
“So, we came into kabusa community and in collaboration with others to clean up the community of littered plastics as well to train them how they can off-cycle waste products.
“So, now that they have been thought on how to off-cycle plastic bottles and other wastes into jewelries and others, they can rest assured of economic empowerment.”
Also, Mrs Ijeoma ladeshaye, the CEO of the association, said that they were in the community to educate and train them on how to process waste products into wealth rather than allowing them to litter the environment.
This habit, she said, could contribute to climate change, adding,” because at the end of the day, the wastes would definitely find their ways into the water bodies and thereby, causing serious harm to the society.
“The wastes can actually be converted into jewelries, hand bangles, necklaces, ear rings among others after we might have trained them rather than allowing them to litter the environment.
“For us to be sure they don’t go back and start littering the environment again, wherever we go to, we make sure we engage somebody on one or two community services at the end of the day.
“The plan is to build some ambassadors or climate change champions who will monitor and give us feed back about the activities of the people in their various communities whether they are actually complying or not.
“And if they are, that means there is no need going back but if they are not, we will still have to go back and make sure they imbibe what we preached to them.”
Ladeshaye expressed optimism that having being trained on how to convert such wastes into wealth, the chances of going back to the old ways of doing things would be slim.
This, she added, was so especially now that the economic situation of the country was not friendly in all ramifications.
Ladeshaye added that all these efforts were targeted at making sure that human activities had lesser pressure on the climate.
