Lagos generates electricity from waste – LAWMA boss

LAGOS— The Lagos State Waste Management Authority, LAWMA, has begun electricity generation from refuse under its waste to energy programme, an official has said.

The Managing Director of the LAWMA, Mr. Ola Oresanya, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria yesterday in Lagos.

“We have waste to energy where we generate electricity from our wastes at one of our markets, Ikosi market. Then we have recycling plants all over that we’ve established.

Right now, for plastic recycling centres, we have four centres up and running. The tyre shredding plant is also going on to manufacture rubbers from used tyres and apart from that we have several other things that are really going on in that regard.”

Oresanya said the waste to energy project would be expanded to cover more markets in 2013.

He also highlighted the activities of the authority in the out-going year, saying that the year had been eventful for the authority.

“Our core area or new ground has been in the area of recycling that we are pushing and that has been our core focus for the development of Lagos and I think that is one key area where we’ve been creative.

“We’ve been able to evolve new strategies to make people recycle in Lagos; to change the perception of people and not to see wastes as waste, so that they will see it as resource and that (buying-back), we’ve been able to do through the introduction of recycling banks all over the city. We have the buying-back programme where people bring wastes and we pay them for bringing the wastes.

“That includes assorted materials like pure water sachets. Right now, you bring it we pay N30 per kilogramme – paper, pet (broken) bottles and many other things like that.  We have the wastes to food programme where we encourage children to bring recycle materials and we exchange that for food packs during holiday.”