VOA常速英语:尼日利亚回收固体垃圾的方法

Another day in this junkyard means another opportunity for 30-year-old Awodu Suleiman to make ends meet. He’s been here for six years, each day scouring through this heap of waste for recyclables. When he’s done sorting plastic or aluminum Suleiman cuts them away for processing. This work is money for me and that is why I’m doing it with passion. From this job I got married to my wife and it sustains us. Life has been easy with me. The local recyclers here buy the trash from we’re talking and convert them into reusable products, mostly pots, local burners and cook wares and then resell them. 55 year-old Mahmud Ahmed said he’s been recycling aluminum for more than 25 years. I started this work in Lagos before I came to this place. From what I get from the sales of my pots, I’m able to pay school fees for my seven children. For many local recyclers like Ahmed the venture is nothing more than a means of daily survival.

But experts say local recycling is much more than that. Nigeria is one of the biggest contributors of solid waste in Africa with an estimated 32 million metric tons of solid waste a year. Almost any country in the world has problems with waste management, so Nigeria is not a particularly peculiar case. So the thing is the fundamental problem we have is because of the logistics does in the sector, waste management is pretty expensive. In 2009 the government awarded contracts for the procurement and installation of recyclers across 26 cities in Nigeria included the capital. Yet there are those with loftier goals. There’s also the concept of zero waste as individuals we can plan to leave life with less waste. And for example now plastic is actually immediate problem globally right now. So they are concepts we... you can go plastic free, you can use alternatives. Solid waste management is the most pressing environmental challenge faced by urban and rural areas of Nigeria. Nigeria’s population is estimated to double by 2050. And this could mean more solid waste hanging around. Unless an improvement is seen local recyclers can only go so far in meeting the country’s recycling needs.