Visionscape, a leading environmental utility group providing turnkey solutions in areas of sanitation, energy and wastewater treatment, has reiterated its commitment towards ridding streets of Lagos of wastes, transforming same to other useful items.

Actually, managing waste in the 21st century requires more than just a conventional approach of collection and disposal of waste, however, Visionscape is undeterred by the existing loopholes in waste management in the Lagos State in the recent past.

To this end, Visionscape commissioned by Lagos State Government to handle its waste matters, has partnered with technology leaders and ready to deploy RFID indent systems, UHF transponders and GPRS sensors in the management of wastes in the State.

The intent, Maimuna Malibe, manager, Environmental Product and Service Development at Visionscape, said, is essentially to 'recover' wastes, turning them to other useful ventures for the society.

Speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek during a Cleaner Lagos initiative/Visionscape media workshop, on the sidelines of immediate measures in place to rid the streets of Lagos of waste dumps, she said that the company, through its 60-day intervention, is working assiduously on waste containment and will provide bins to residents, wastes collection, transportation, disposal, treatment and resources recovery.

Immediate Interventions
Malibe said, "The immediate intervention is covered in our 60-day programme to create awareness for Visionscape services and make sure there is no service gap in waste collection in Lagos State. Before we rolled out of compactors doo-to-door collection, we procured tippers that will collect wastes from blackspots, immediate environments and highways where wastes are indiscriminately dumped. For 60 days, which commenced on July 1, 2017, we are going to be collecting wastes. So, members of the public who spot any blackspot in their neighbourhood should reach out to Visionscape and we will clear it. That will proceed the commencement of our operations in September. The charges are at Visionscape's costs.

"We are going to be involved in waste containment providing bins to residents, wastes collection, transportation, disposal, treatment and resources recovery. Basically, we are looking at the entire waste management chain; to create value out of waste. I like to say waste is not a waste until you waste it. It is always something to do with different materials we produce in our homes and in commercial places. Even a day old baby can produce wastes.

"So, at Visionscape, we are looking at different ways of converting the resources that we collect; it goes beyond collecting from the residence and go bury them at the landfill sites. We have the concession facilities that we have taken over the operations like the three transfer loading stations located in Agege, Oshodi and Tappa. They will provide the stop-gap for our operations. Therefore, we are trying to stop our trucks from traveling very far.

"Imagine the truck that has to travel from Badagry to the landfill in Epe; it doesn’t make any operational sense; in terms of our freight management and cost of operations. Thus, we have taken the concession of the three transfer stations in such that all the contractors- tricycles, pick-up trucks that collect wastes from the residents or communities, are going to dump wastes at the transfer-loading stations closest to that particular community".

How Technological Will Redefine Waste Management in Lagos State
On technological interventions, she emphasized that Visionscape's waste logistics set-up takes into considerations all relevant parameters including area population structure (densely or sparsely populated), dominant building structure, waste types and volume; and other geographical parameters for sequenced and optimized routing calculation.

Thus, technology enables to be deployed will assist them in real-time respond to existing and new orders via our automated order management platform which is visually supported and route optimized; utilise Modern GPS supported waste collection and monitoring system; manoeuvre through the hectic road traffic situation by selecting the most efficient and economical route for our complete fleet and view single vehicle and overlay of vehicles track.

According to the Manager, Environmental Product and Service Development at Visionscape, "each transfer stations has the capacity of about of between 1500-2000 tons per day. Lagos produces about 11,000 tons of waste per day. If you look at it, each transfer-loading station has the capacity to take off enough wastes to be collected in a particular shift. What is going to happen is, after dumping at the transfer-loading stations, we are going to be compacting the wastes for bulkers to move the wastes to the landfill sites. Our landfill site is going to be an engineered one with an eco-pack with sorting facilities. They shall be sorted into different components. So, there is a whole lot that goes into VisionScape's processes, not just waste collection and disposal.

"So, our bins are going to be fitted with infrared and tags. There are going to be code attached to each bin; so we know the bin that is supposed to be in Ikeja, for Ikoyi and other places. If the bin that is supposed to be in Ikoyi miraculously finds itself in Epe, we would be able to tell that is a wrong spot for it.

"Our trucks too will have signals that will be able to open up the bin locations as they drive through the communities as well.

Plans for Recycling
For recycling, She said, "we have to start door-to-door collection, and will open recycling collection points in different wards. As we all know, there are 57 LCDAs in Lagos State and under them are 377 wards. So, what we are doing in recycling is we are taking it back to the grassroots, where waste is being produced. We know that some of the wastes are going to end at the transfer-loading stations and landfill sites, but we are trying to recover the wastes from point of collection. Eventually, we are going to end up with 377 collection points; we would encourage the people to swap plastics, papers and other wastes to receive some incentives".