Lagos PSP Operators Embrace Circular Economy Shift — Abubakar

Mrs Habiba Abubakar is the Country Managing Director, Zoomlion, a waste management expert company. In this interview, she speaks on the essence of road rehabilitation and waste disposal platforms delivered by the company at Olusosun dumpsite in Lagos as well as the firm’s partnership on waste management with the Lagos State Government.

What is this road rehabilitation and waste disposal platforms on Olusosun dumpsite for?

This was an intervention in part for Lagos State. I don’t know if in the last few weeks you’ve been hearing about waste management crisis in the state, people don’t know how and where to dump their waste. The core of the problem really was that most of the landfills, the dumpsites were full. Not full really, but not accessible because of the rains. The roads were not good. So what would typically happen is that they pick waste from homes and then where to dump becomes a problem.

You saw some of those queues by PSP operators. So turnaround time was really difficult. I mean, typically, they should be able to turnaround twice a day, but spend a week or more to discharge waste on the dumpsite. So what was happening was they were not able to turn around, dump waste, leave the site and go back to pick another. Obviously, the backward effect is what we’re feeling in our homes when they are not able to come and dump and turn around.

So where does your firm fit in?

We are waste management experts. We’ve spent over 25 years with our mother company, Zoomlion Ghana, just one group of companies. Waste management is something we’ve been doing for the past 25 years. So there’s really no aspect around the value chain that we don’t play. In Lagos specifically, we deal with the treatments. We don’t do what PSPs do. Our job is really to help the PSPs moving from a linear economy to circular. So our job really is to take that waste when they dump it and make it useful, waste to wealth, which is what we really play in here in Lagos. Now, when the issue came and our partners, which is Lagos State and LAWMA, they know our expertise, they reached out to us to help. Even though it’s not in the scope of the partnership we signed, they asked us to help because we’ve done it before. We looked at it. One of our mandates or our mission statement is improving the lives of people everywhere we go. So beyond waste, I mean, just even by virtue of being here, you will know that there’s a Zoom Lion office here because every time we go to the dumpsite, we would always give food. That’s what we live for, helping, empowering people.

And when they reached out to say, can you do this for us? We looked at it and I spoke to the chairman as well to say, this is a major problem for Lagos State and they have us as partners, what are the benefits apart from the contracts that we’ve signed? They need to also know that, there should always be value. We looked at it and we said, let’s do it for them. It’s something we do easily. So we moved some of our team members, a lot of our team members are in different African countries because they’re also doing this in different countries. So we moved a few of them here. We did a plan and then the plan was to execute it in 21 days. We had challenges because of the rains, but the plan was to deliver this thing in 21 days because we understood that for every delay, there’s an impact. The fastest time we could do it was in 21 days and we did it in 25 days just because of the delays – the rains.

What is the impact of what you have done?

Now, what you’ll be seeing going forward is that trucks are able to move. Trucks will be able to tip quickly, turnaround time will be faster, PSPs make more money, and residents are happy. Ultimately, they are picking your waste and that value chain continues.