How To Start A Lucrative Recycling Business In Nigeria
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| Plastic containers before recycling |
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There’s nothing more exciting than having fun and making money while
at it. When it comes to recycling, it’s about of keeping your
environment clean and generating income at the same time. Recycling is
the perfect example to use when stating that people see gold right in
front of them, yet they do not know it. Recycling business ideas and
opportunities are largely overlooked because of the low awareness
surrounding the industry in Nigeria.
The amount of garbage generated in Nigeria everyday spans in
thousands of tons. These garbage causes a major headache for the country
and the general well being of the people living in it. While health
concerns are a major issue with garbage littered all around, financial
gain is a big plus for a few daring individuals that cannot only see the
business opportunity in collecting the wastes, but can also strive to
keep their environments clean.
When a lot of people hear about recycling, they majorly think about
setting up a factory, buying large recycling machines, and a lot more
discouraging thoughts. The few who realize that sourcing recyclables for
recycling factories could also be highly profitable without setting up a
factory, take the plunge and profit from the venture in silence. A
perfect example is Nigerian born Bilikiss Adebiyi, the CEO of
Wecyclers. She only sources recyclables and doesn’t own a recycling factory but, generates millions in revenue every month.
When collecting recyclable waste, the savvy individuals in the
business filter exactly what they want. You can decide to collect only
plastic waste, only aluminum can wastes, only rubber wastes, any other
type, or all of them. Executing recycling business ideas that focus on
the collection of a particular type of waste keeps the recycler’s
business streamlined, makes waste collection easier, and increases the
chances of profitability. If you’re looking for profitable recycling
business ideas and opportunities to invest in, in Nigeria, this article
is going to prove highly informative to you. It’ll cover only the major
top three recycling waste collection opportunities in Nigeria, so you
can get started as soon as possible.
Here are the top 3 waste collection recycling business ideas and opportunities in Nigeria:
1). Plastic Recycling:
There’s almost no vicinity in Nigeria where there aren’t hundreds of
plastic wastes lying around and causing environmental hazards. Every
local government has it’s own fair share of this pollution. On an
average, over one thousand plastic wastes are dropped on the floor at
frequented bus stops in Lagos, Nigeria, every 6 hours. With the large
volume of plastic wastes been piled up in such areas, cleaning up these
environments on an hourly basis would be a full scale business for
anyone who takes a plunge. The volume of plastic waste generated cannot
be easily managed by any plastic waste collection center. So there’s
always room for more.
Thousands of occasions and events are held everyday in the country.
These occasions and events contribute immensely to the volume
of disturbing plastic wastes that are generated. With an excessive
volume of these recyclables piling up every minute, plastic recycling
keeps growing into a larger industry of it’s own. The pile up trend
doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and in five years, about ten times the
volume of plastic wastes piled up today would be generated then. Making
the industry a more volatile one.
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| Bottles, Tubs and Jugs only. Empty liquid and food contents, do not crush |
With a genuine interest in plastic recycling, what can you do about
the volume of plastic wastes been piled up in your environment? The
smart answer for a savvy entrepreneur is simple: Start collecting the
plastic waste! By starting with your current environment, you could be a
major player if you play your cards right. Find out if there are
associations and local laws concerning recycling and waste collection if
you want to start, and enjoy the financial benefits while you keep your
environment clean.
2). Paper Recycling:
The volume of paper wastes piling up are already out of control. With
millions of students and pupils in the country buying, using, and
disposing notebooks, paper wastes disposal keeps exploding. This trend
is inclusive of the newspapers people read on a daily basis, papers used
to wrap food items, and a lot more.
Everyone generates paper waste everyday. It is almost unavoidable.
With this explosive trend, collecting paper waste is a great way to
venture into the recycling waste collection business. Find recyclers
that want paper recyclables. Find out the exact type they are more
interested in, and start collecting them. Doing this will not only make
you money, but would also keep your environment clean.
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| Office paper, newspaper, envelopes, magazines, brochures, catalogs, paperback books and phone books all accepted |
3). E-Waste Recycling:
E-wastes, also known as electronic wastes, are pretty much electronic
devices like monitors, printers, etc, that have been used and dumped
for disposal. Piling up electronic waste would seem to be utter
disorganization because it’s never a funny sight. But behind all these,
is a great opportunity. E-waste recycling is the most profitable of all
three mentioned, but the trickiest to get right.
Electronic waste aren’t exactly always lying around like plastic
waste. They are majorly domiciled indoors in homes, businesses,
factories, and the likes. Getting these wastes would largely involve
creating a financial awareness for it, where people that own the waste
could make some money selling them to you, after which you finally
resell them to the final recycler. Identify a key location where there’d
be a large concentration of electronic waste and, place yourself as a
key collector. You’d majorly have to pay for almost all the electronic
waste collected. Although electronic waste is the trickiest to source,
and the most capital intensive, if you can successfully gather tons of
it, you’ll have a higher return on investment.
These three recycling business ideas and opportunities have been
proven time and again to be profitable by various Nigerian and other
entrepreneurs around the world.
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| Recycling Process |
1. Haulers dump materials onto the tipping floor. A loader moves the material up onto the conveyor.
2. Team members remove non-recyclable items, plastic bags and bulky items that can’t go through the system.
3. A screen separates the cardboard using rotating discs. Smaller objects fall through and continue on.
4. A finishing screen separates out 2-D objects (paper). 3-D containers fall through and continue on.
5. A strong magnet removes steel cans and separates them into a holding bin.
6. An eddy current separator repels aluminum cans and foil from the conveyor and into another holding area.
7. An optical sorter uses cameras and sensors to separate plastics by resin code (type).
8. Glass bottles and jars are shattered throughout the process. The shards fall below and are separated out.
How To Start Plastic Recycling Company In Nigeria
Plastic collection for recycling can generally be termed the
“diamond in the rough”
that hasn’t been found by the majority. While a couple of people have
realized the potential in plastic recycling, many still remain unaware.
In the above article talking about the “Top Three Recycling Business Ideas and Opportunities In Nigeria”, plastic recycling came up on top because of it’s extreme and proven viability in Nigeria and many other parts of the world.
A lot of people are actively involved in plastic recycling, but
there’s a serious problem to it; startup capital. The startup capital
for running a plastic recycling factory is on a high end. It’s estimated
to cost about 25 million Naira ($84,000) to set up a plastic recycling
factory. This cost is extremely high for the common man because of the
cost of building the factory, purchasing the recycling machines, and
many other factors. But around every problem, there’s a solution or two
lurking around the corner. Rather than setting up a plastic recycling
factory, recycling businesses are springing up that focus majorly on the
collection and distribution of plastic bottle wastes to plastic
recyclers. This opportunity pays off greatly for many businesses that
want to venture into full time plastic recycling on the long run. If
your business starts with collecting plastic bottles, you could be on
your way to owning your own recycling factory with dedicated hard and
smart work.
Before you start your collection of plastic bottle recyclables, you
need to know what type of plastic bottles are majorly used, what
processes the plastic bottles go through before the final sale, the
recycling machines that are used, and a lot more important facts. This
plastic recycling business plan for the collection and supply of plastic
bottle recyclables, would give you a broad insight on what it takes to
start collecting plastic bottles for recycling.
Here is the plastic recycling business plan with steps to fully setting up a profitable plastic recycling collection business:
Step 1: What type of plastic bottles do recycling factories require?
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is the answer. These are the common
plastic bottles that you see on a daily basis. Examples of these are
soda and water bottles like the coca-cola plastic bottles, pepsi plastic
bottles, most bottled waters, and many more. PET bottles are majorly
used because they are the easiest to recycle. Their recycled by-products
can be used to make life jackets, bags, ropes, furniture, combs, car
bumpers, and of course, plastic bottles. There are also other types of
plastic bottles that can be recycled, but PET bottles are the most
popular plastic bottles that are recycled in Nigeria.
Step 2: How can I find plastic bottles for recycling?
There are various channels to acquire plastic bottles:
1). You can get plastic bottles by building small metal
trucks and leasing it out to individuals that’d push the trucks on a
daily basis:
These individuals would move from place to place to pick up plastic
bottles on the streets, then drop them in their trucks. When they’ve
picked up so much for the day, they would reconvene at your recycling
dump site to weigh what they’ve collected and get paid for it. Usually,
they are paid 20 Naira per kilogram for everything they deliver for the
day. So if they bring back 25kg, they’re paid about 500 Naira ($1.6).
This means if they can turn in 1000kg (one ton) a day, they’d get paid
subsequently with the right adjusted calculation. This fee is a standard
in the Nigerian plastic recycling industry. A perfect example of a
recycling company that uses a similar method is
Wecyclers. They use something they call Wecycles to pick up plastic bottles from households and the likes.
2). You can get plastic bottles from event centres:
After every occasion and event, lots of plastic bottles are always
littered around. You could make a good deal by talking with the
cleaners, security staff, or the event organisers themselves to either
give you their plastic waste for free, or sell them to you for a small
fee.
3). You can get plastic waste from restaurants and fast-foods:
With thousands of restaurants and fast-foods scattered all over the
country, there’s an abundance of plastic bottle wastes to be collected
daily. Strike deals with the cleaners, and they would store and sell
the plastic bottle wastes to you for a little personal extra cash at the
end of each day.
4). You could pick from public dump sites:
Dump sites by far have the largest collection of plastic wastes. But
beware of cabals at the sites. They control everything from the pickup
to the payments. This collection method was saved for last because,
although it has huge potentials, the politicking behind getting the
plastic wastes from any dump site in Nigeria might not be worth your
time.
There are many other intelligent means to get plastic wastes; by
offering households incentives to store their plastic wastes for your
collection business, and a lot more. Get creative and explore many other
channels for collecting plastic wastes no one else has explored.
Step 3: Now I know how to get plastic bottle wastes. What next?
Next you need to consider transportation and many other factors.
Transporting the plastic bottle wastes from various pick up sites to
your personal dump site, and finally the recycling company’s factory,
also carries it’s own cost. Transportation could reduce or completely
eliminate your potential profit if not handled well. But hey, there’re
ways to still transport and make huge profits. These methods have to do
with what happens to the plastics when they get to your dump site before
transportation to the recycling factory for sale:
1). If you sort and clean the plastic bottles before you deliver it, the amount you’d be paid goes a little higher.
2). If after sorting, you use a bailing and cutting machine to
compress the plastic bottle wastes to smaller sizes, you’d be paid even
more for the recyclable delivered to the recycler for sale.
3). If after bailing, you use a grinding machine to grind the bailed plastics, your payment cost goes even higher.
So let’s do the math. Let’s say you gathered one ton (1000kg) of
plastic bottle wastes and prepared it for sale to a recycling factory,
here would be your return on investment per level:
1). Without sorting and with sorting could be around 25 to 30 Naira
per kg which would amount to about 25,000 to 30,000 Naira ($83.4 to
$100). When you put in the cost of collecting the plastics,
transportation, and more, you could make not more that 5000 Naira
($16.7) in profit or a terrible loss. If you sell ten tons (10,000kg),
your revenue would be between 250,000 to 300,000 Naira ($834 to $1000).
At this stage of plastic recycling collection and sale, what would
determine if you turn in a profit would be how you handle expenses,
especially on transportation.
2). If after sorting, you bail or grind, you could be paid between 65
to 75 Naira per kg. This would mean you’d make about 25,000 Naira
($83.4) more in profit per each ton (1000kg), than when you simply
collect and sort. If you handle your expenses well, you could earn more
than 25,000 Naira ($83.4) per ton in profit. Tracking your expenses is
crucial to your success.
Here is an article that will teach you why small businesses fail and how to overcome it.
Bailing or grinding means if you deliver 10 tons (10,000 kg) a week,
you’d make at least 250,000 Naira ($834) in profit every week. From all
indications, bailing and/or grinding is the right way to go. A little
challenge here is the cost of the bailing and grinding machine. The cost
of an average bailing machine on
Alibaba is between $3000 to $8000.
3). After you’ve bailed and/or ground, you’d need to transport your
final products to the recycler. Find the cheapest and most effective
transporter you know to assist with the transportation of your plastic
bottle recyclables to the recycling factory for sale. It’s even better
if you own a truck that can handle this for you.
With this plastic bottle recycling business plan for a collection
& distribution business, you can better easily get started. Visit
local plastic bottle dumpsites in your city to see how it all works.
This would fully prepare your mind for the task ahead. With the right
tools, hard & smart work, and a solid distribution network, you’d be
on your way to success only from sourcing plastic bottle recyclables.
