Keeping it simple: This recycling business is thriving

By Kate Okorie, bird story agency

Plastic waste is everywhere in Nigeria. The streets are littered with lightweight plastics and metallic parts. The culprits are regular citizens who discard trash with little regard to how and where and even the decrepit waste collection trucks can sometimes be seen trailing trash in their wake.

In the absence of strong environmental policies or government infrastructure, there has been a proliferation of privately-owned companies that make money removing this waste from the streets. It's a competitive and tough business but one company has come up with a model that has seen it expand rapidly.

Scrapay started with a simple premise - any company that relied on its own collection infrastructure was going to struggle to make money.

So Scrapays came up with a system that offers the most efficiency.

The waste distribution chain begins with a waste producer who places a pickup order that a collector receives. The collector weighs the items at the pickup point and pays the producer accordingly. Next in the chain are the agents, who usually assemble waste from multiple collectors for offtake to the processing point.

Technology enables the company to maintain a stakeholder network. Scrapays provides a quick code (USSD) platform for waste producers and collectors.

The low-tech mobile messaging service allows them to place pickup orders, track earnings and make payments from their mobile wallet; earnings can be transferred directly to a local bank account and withdrawn as cash.

While the quick codes may be simple to use, a fully integrated artificial intelligence framework enables agents to value items and make payments to collectors within a short timeframe. The system receives inputs automatically from a wide variety of sources, to keep valuations up to date.

Arewa revealed that incentives received by each individual in the chain depend on the type of material recovered, time of the year, and local and international market forces.

He explained that the price fluctuations result from the ongoing rainy season in Nigeria. To ensure transparency, the company's system provides recent prices of the recyclables, including plastic, aluminium, metals and PET bottles.

One of Scrapays agents, a commercial tricycle vendor, makes around 1.3 million Nigerian naira (US$3,000) every six weeks from selling the vehicle's packaging materials — cartons, plastic stretch wraps and light metals. Previously, she paid people to dispose of them.

Some agents set up multiple collection locations and help retrieve up to 4 tonnes of waste from the environment, monthly.

Arewa founded the company together with fellow Geoscience coursemates Tope Sulaimon and Olumide Ogunleye while the three were still undergraduates at the Federal University of Technology Akure, in Southwest Nigeria.

They initially named it Panti — a Yoruba word for waste. Currently operating in five states in Nigeria, including Lagos, Scrapays' business model has, like the company, evolved significantly. Importantly, by connecting everyone in the recycling ecosystem and making pricing, collections and payments more transparent and reliable, the system they've developed incentivises the waste producers themselves to recycle and helps collectors make more money.

According to Arewa, Scrapays collectors network has grown by 25% on a month-on-month basis.

The company also leverages its multi-use platform — USSD, mobile apps and web — to generate profit from app subscriptions as well as in-app transactions, to boost its primary earnings from facilitating the recycling value chain.

Scrapays' business model has significant appeal to investors and grant bodies; it is the only waste management company selected for the latest Google Black Founders Fund.

A little-known additional revenue source for the company is carbon credits. The company has tapped into the international carbon trading system, earning dollars for the removal of carbon from the environment.

With growth and increased credibility, it might be expected that the company would push to establish branches right across the country. However, Scrapays is segmenting its expansion very strategically. It is looking to expand one Nigerian state at a time, while also expanding to other countries - not only in Africa but also Latin America and Southeast Asia - that face similar waste problems to Nigeria's.

bird story agency