FBRA recovers 3 tonnes of recyclables in Lagos, Oyo for World Cleanup Day

The Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA) has recovered 3,000.92 kilograms of recyclable materials, equivalent to 3 metric tonnes, across Lagos and Oyo States as part of its activities to mark World Cleanup Day 2026.

The interventions, which engaged 419 participants, combined community cleanup, awareness, recyclables buyback, and stakeholder engagement, demonstrating the Alliance’s approach to backing advocacy for improved waste management with practical action on the ground.

In Ikorodu, Lagos, FBRA recovered 2,226kg of recyclable materials and brought together 301 participants for a community-based cleanup and recovery exercise in the Agbele community.

The exercise was carried out in collaboration with Lets Do it Nigeria team, the Lagos State Ministry of Environment & Water Resources and Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA)  involved volunteers, street sweepers, government representatives, environmental organisations, Zyntomax FBRA’s collection partner in Ikorodu and FBRA member companies.

Participants embarked on an awareness walk through the community, collecting waste and recyclable materials along the route while engaging residents and sensitizing them on responsible waste disposal and the value of recovering materials for recycling.

The Ikorodu intervention also featured a community buyback programme, providing residents with an opportunity to exchange recyclable materials for value through product incentives and connect recovered materials to the formal recycling chain.

FBRA’s collection partner, Zyntomax, supported the recovery and collection of materials gathered during the exercise.

In Ibadan, Oyo State, FBRA recovered an additional 774.48kg of recyclable materials and engaged 118 participants through its sponsorship of the Recyclables Buyback scheme held as part of the Oyo Waste Summit 3.0.

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The Oyo engagement further demonstrated FBRA’s approach of combining thought leadership, advocacy and action. The Alliance’s Executive Director, Agharese Onaghise, delivered a paper at the summit on ‘the Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging Industry in Nigeria’, while FBRA also hosted a panel session featuring six member companies of the Alliance, who discussed industry innovations in managing post-consumer packaging materials across different waste streams.

By supporting the recyclables buyback alongside its participation in the summit’s policy and industry conversations, FBRA connected discussions around sustainable waste management with direct community-level recovery.

Commenting on the World Cleanup Day activities, Onaghise said FBRA remained focused on developing systems that make it easier for communities to recover recyclable materials and connect them to the recycling value chain.

“For the sustainability of this cleanup initiative, FBRA is working on launching a recyclables collection centre within the Ikorodu community,” Onaghise said.

She noted that establishing accessible collection infrastructure would help encourage behavioural change by providing residents with a convenient channel to recover recyclable materials rather than dispose of them indiscriminately.

The combined results from both states bring the total materials recovered through FBRA’s World Cleanup Day 2026 activities to 3,000.92kg, with 419 participants directly involved across the two interventions.

The activities also reflect FBRA’s broader strategy of strengthening Nigeria’s circular economy by connecting communities, producers, government institutions, waste collectors and recyclers while creating practical pathways for post-consumer packaging materials to return to productive use through recycling.

Rather than treating World Cleanup Day solely as a cleanup exercise, the Alliance used the occasion to demonstrate how advocacy, industry collaboration, community participation and economic incentives can work together to drive waste recovery.

The interventions in Lagos and Oyo further reinforce FBRA’s position that meaningful progress in waste management requires both conversation and action: engaging stakeholders on the systems needed to improve waste recovery while simultaneously creating opportunities for communities to participate in those systems.