Growing up I use to see my mother making sure to install in us the purpose of clean environment. And apart that its a way to create neatness and space where we live, its brings and keep the environment in order thereby keeping us so healthy, avoiding all kinds of sickness which leads to why health is wealth even without us knowing what recycling was then.
Although in those days, we do not have plastic drinks around which is the major items to environmental damages, but we do have plastics bags called nylon or cellophanes. And to avoid trashing them into the waste, she will always put fire 🔥 on cut dried weeds and add the nylons to it to burn off. This usually helps to prevent just dumping the nylon around.
And as time and years keep modernizing things, awareness became the end result on how we became aware of recycling items that are recyclable which has helped us drastically in reducing the dumping into drainages that cause blockages.
In this recent times plastics and papers has become so useful in recycling that it has even become source of income for so many people as some companies are now buying them to reuse them in manufacturing some end products. This I first noticed from how empty cartons were hot cake in my country Nigeria 🇳🇬, as daily some from the Hausa tribes from the north goes about buying empty cartons. This made carton very expensive.
And in this round of prompt that says “How often do I recycle? Am that kind of person who pays attention to environmental health and do not like waste littered, although I do not recycle my plastics by myself but I do gather and keep them to get to a quantity when I will give it out to a boy who picks plastics for sale as a means of livelihood because of recent plastics picking for sale became something we have not seen before, and this is due to how some companies went into recycling plastics and papers.
In fact right now in my country you can not see a single plastic on the road or inside the gutter like we usually see before. And its indeed baffling to how era changes things through innovation. As we walk on the road, we will see many of this boys carrying sack bags hunting for plastics. They will start from the morning into the evening making it a job that they earn from week round.
And since I do not recycle by myself, I will gather my used plastics from bottled water 💦 to soda 🥤 and leave them in a corner to allow it quantity, then will call this boy that picks plastics to come for them. This is way to make sure they do not end up into the gutter and hinder drainages.
Talking of a reliable recycling system in my country Nigeria 🇳🇬 is a thing of the past because I could remember few years back when the government established a body who handles this recycling of plastics and papers but they could not keep it up after years later. Then they will come to every streets to pack plastics from house 🏡 to house 🏡. But you know what the government is all about. They have no focus due to selfish reasons.
However, am so glade with the recent developments to plastics recycling in my country from these new founds from the companies that buy from the boys that goes about picking plastics, while others who are not into plastics picking buys old irons and other waste materials for conversion. It tells us of how the future holds something great to our environment and Mother Earth 🌎.
This is my response to the #hivelearners featured content for week 160, edition 02, tagged “Recycling Practices”.
Thanks for reading friends 💕💕.
Images are mine
