If you peer into the gutters of any big Nigerian city, a filthy sight awaits you: Floating cans, nylon water sachets, empty bottles and other waste materials discarded by humans, swept there by rain, gathering and clogging up the drain.
This is not only a Nigerian problem, it is a global challenge. The world continues to writhe under the burden of waste management. In 2019, the Global Material Footprint (the amount of raw material including fossil fuels, biomass and metal and non-metal ore, extracted to meet total consumption demand), according to the United Nations, was 85.9 billion tonnes – up from 73.2 billion tonnes 10 years before. Meanwhile, the world’s electronics waste – namely discarded smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices – grew by 38 percent in that same year.
Today, March 18, the world celebrates Global Recycling Day with the theme #RecyclingHeroes to draw attention to “the people, places and activities that showcase what an important role recycling plays in contributing to an environmentally stable planet and a greener future which will benefit all”.
In Nigeria, “wastepreneurs” are providing an answer to this by taking waste straight from the dump, transforming it and redefining its purpose. These innovators work with different materials – water sachets, scrap metal, bottles, plastic, tyres and more – with many of them learning on the job, how to manipulate these objects, to make “beauty out of ashes”. These entrepreneurs ask: “If you can recycle it, why waste it?”
Ade Dagunduro, 34, uses waste materials such as car tyres, scrap metal, rope and plastic, to form works of art at his studio in Dugbe, Idaban [Femi Amogunla/Al Jazeera]Ade Dagunduro: ‘Not trash, but a thing of beauty’
Surrounded by art pieces in his gallery in Dugbe at the heart of Ibadan, Ade Dagunduro, 34, takes us through his creative journey. A graduate of Fine Art from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, his desire to push the boundaries of what he learned within the walls of a university spurred him to take up more training in painting and sculpture.
“School was more theoretical, less practical. When you get out of school and into the real world, you realise there is much more to learn,” he says.
Art has “changed his life”, he adds, and, now, he can help improve life a little for others by taking waste from the streets to make art.
Originally working with regular art materials such as paint, clay and wood, five years ago, Dagunduro decided to challenge himself by thinking beyond those.
“I wanted to see if I could actually think outside the box. I asked myself if I could be more creative,” he says. In his quest to do this, Dagunduro learned to manipulate waste materials like used tyres, which would otherwise be burned – a common cause of pollution in Nigeria.
His first work with waste in 2016 was an ox made out of a tyre, called The Challenge. These days, he also works with metal, ropes and plastic which he finds on the streets in his community. Sometimes, people bring materials to his studio.
“Our environment can now smile because we have people like us trying to ease off its burden by picking the waste off its shoulders. These days, you hardly find cartons, for instance, littering the streets. Humans are exhausting the forests. Now we need more paper, so we have to start recycling what we see on the street,” he says.
Dagunduro’s latest work, titled Torso, is a female form made from dismantled motorcycle chains – which he picked up from a motorcycle mechanic’s workshop – welded together.
“You first craft with clay, then you take the mould which has been constructed and cast it out with cement. After that, you allow it to dry and then ‘liberate’ it out of the clay. So now that it is out, the pattern is already printed on the mould, and you can begin welding the metal around it, which is done in batches. After that, you couple the metal pieces together.”
Dagunduro says this is then followed by cleaning and shining, to prevent rust and preserve the artwork.
The motorcycle chains that would have been thrown on a dump now stand as a sculpture, in the far-right corner of Ade Dag Art Gallery, waiting to be bought; “waiting to re-enter the world that discarded it, not as trash but as a thing of beauty,” he says.
Adejoke Lasisi turns discarded sachets of drinking water into art by using them to weave attractive items including clothes, slippers, bags and mats. Nylon water sachets are a major pollutant where she lives in Ibadan, frequently found clogging up drains and littering the streets [Femi Amogunla/Al Jazeera]Adejoke Lasisi: Making a school bag from 250 used water sachets
Adejoke Lasisi, who is in her early 30s, is from a traditional, middle-class weaving family in Ibadan. Aged nine, she started weaving the popular aso-òfì, a material made from cotton threads, traditionally woven by Yorùbá people.
Now, she has turned her craft into a way to relieve her home city of some of its waste burden. In Nigeria, discarded “pure water” sachets – small, rectangular sachets of drinking water made from nylon – are a common sight on roads and in gutters.
“I began to pick them up,” she says. “I also began to think of what I could do with them.
“People were always complaining about the pure water nylon sachets everywhere. I worked out that it would be great to make these nylon sachets into colourful clothing.”
She has now perfected the art of blending weaving wool with nylon. Doing this involves a five-step process before the sachets are transformed into attractive products such as bags, purses, slippers, mats, artwork and more.
First, Lasisi sources the nylon – picking up sachets from the streets and receiving discarded, imperfect sachets from water processing plants. She says the nylon used to make pure water sachets has two advantages: It is the right texture for weaving and is largely a neutral colour, meaning it is easy to dye.
“After sorting, we wash the material thoroughly and disinfect it, after which we dry it in the sun. The whole process takes three days. Once dried, we shred the material with scissors into thread-like strands. Then, we can begin to weave them on the loom.”
One of her most popular products is a school bag which is made from 10 percent òfì and 90 percent nylon and recycles 250 water sachets in the process.
Since Lasisi started Planet3R, her for-profit business, in 2020, she has also partnered with different organisations and won several grants in Nigeria and overseas to train young people in the art.
“I hope that other young people will be able to save the environment with their hands too. The more wastepreneurs we have, the cleaner our environment becomes.”
Tunde Odunlade is a well-known artist who has exhibited his work in the US. He uses discarded fabric and rags to make batik quilt tapestries at his studio in Ibadan, Nigeria [Femi Amogunla/Al Jazeera]Tunde Odunlade: ‘Fabrics tell stories’
On a table in Tunde Odunlade’s Bodija office stands a mound of different fabrics which have been thrown away. Close by, on the wall, a piece of art made from cotton fabric is mounted – showing, right here, the “before” and “after” process of his work.
Odunlade’s journey to wastepreneur took an unlikely route. After an exhibition of batik art in the United States in 1987, Odunlade, who is now in his 70s, had been told to come and pick up his exhibits to take them away for safekeeping but, because of his engagements, he could not find the time to do so.
Then, something unexpected happened. A cat owned by his friend at the gallery managed to get into the artworks and tore his batik to pieces.
“I was pained. I actually started crying but something told me that crying would not solve anything at that point. Instead, I should figure out a way to prevent future occurrence,” he says.
The solution he found marked the beginning of a new journey in his career as an artist.
“In order to prevent my work from tearing easily, I started layering, on top of one another, between four and six layers of used cloth in areas of importance in each work. That made it thicker,” says Odunlade.
Today, he collects used cloth which he likes to call “found material” as opposed to “waste material” because the materials are either found by him or, he says, the materials “find” him.
“Most of what people refer to as àkísà [the Yoruba word for rags], I now collect from people who otherwise would have thrown them away, in order to make a work of art,” says Odunlade, who calls this style of art batik quilt tapestry. These days, people bring cloth they no longer need to his studio.
Odunlade sees fabric as a means to document moments in our lives.
“You see, fabric in itself tells story … they all have documented history from time immemorial. Whatever fabric I use, it had a story before it got to me. After I make it into an artwork, it starts to tell another story as it speaks to people. So I see myself as a historian by virtue of working with these many fabrics,” he says.
For Odunlade, it is the responsibility of citizens to improve the environment. “The truth is that what we have done to the environment, that is what the environment is doing back to us.” He says the world is in this waste dilemma because of human actions and inactions.
“Sometimes when I am driving on the street or taking a public bus, I am always on the lookout for people who litter the environment. Once they do that, I charge towards them to challenge their dirty habit. Start from something as little as that,” he advises.
