Environment Safety

Enugu Metro supports efforts to ensure that community environments are free from hazards that threaten the safety and well-being of citizens.

Mulltia CSI is committed to protect the earth from Enugu, our host community, to the rest of Nigeria. Our environment safety interventions focus on two worldwide challenges, namely, waste management and deforestation.

Mulltia CSI

Our world needs pristine and hazard-free environment for people to survive and thrive. We are committed to supporting and facilitating worthy efforts to create sustainable and safe environments that secures the future for coming generations.

The Community Environmental Safety (CES) Initiative is the vehicle to actualize this dream. The projects are CESI 3R, CESI Tree Planting, and CESI Recycle Rangers.

The NP3R Project

The NP3R Project is an operation and advocacy project to eradicate the harmful effects of plastic pollution in our communities.

by editor September 5, 2023September 20, 2023

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CESI Recycle Rangers

The overarching objectives of CESI Initiative are (a) to facilitate and encourage the preservation of the natural beauty of our immediate environment and (b) to reduce health-related pollution risks in community environments. In the beginning, our focus will be on plastic pollution. We have launched two advocacy and operational projects designed to manage post-consumer single-use plastic pollution.

Introduction to Plastic Pollution

The general background to the issue of environmental pollution is captured in an article by Ifechi Anikwe in Enugu Metro, title “How Plastics Damage Our Health in Nigeria.” In the article, Ms. Anikwe exposes the dangers of plastic pollution and its dire health consequences to the citizens. As she put it, Nigerian people casually throw plastics away in schools, homes, markets, parks, offices, and on roadsides. These include plastic bottles, wrappers, water bottles, juice bottles, sachet water, and everyday single-use plastic like Styrofoam plates, straws and cutlery. The article demonstrated how plastics find their way into the air and to water bodies to cause irreparable damage to human health.

The Plastic Problem

The article by Ifechi Anikwe identifies three major problems of plastic pollution in Nigerian cities.

First, no matter how they are disposed, plastics find their way into water bodies and humans consume them. Significantly, plastics broken down by biological and mechanical processes find their way into the human food chain when we drink contaminated water or consume toxicated seafood.

Second, on roadsides and landfills, plastic decompose and give out dangerous gases that mix with the air we breathe.  They dissolve into microplastics that can cause cancer or produce chemicals and radiations that multiply quickly to damage plant and animal life.

Third, the chemicals used to produce plastic are not only toxic but remain toxic for a long time, sometimes up to 500 years. In humans, these chemicals have been linked to infertility, birth defects, cancer in humans and brain damage. In animal and aquatic life, they cause destruction of ecosystems and suffocation of marine species.

Proposed Solutions

CESI will pursue three solutions to the problem through the CESI 3R, and CESI Plastics Rangers Projects.

CESI Project 3R

Enugu State Government is currently undertaking commendable initiatives in disposing of refuse in the Coal City. These efforts need to be supported with a program that enables government to be intentional about maximizing the gains of refuse management. One is the waste to wealth program that enables power to be generated from Enugu wastes, given that the state has just signed the Electricity Law. The other, which is our area of interest, is ensuring that plastics are separated from trash before they are wheeled to landfills.  

CESI Project 3R is a Community Social Responsibility project designed to promote clean and healthy environments that are free from plastics pollution. Enugu Metro, in collaboration with public authorities, recycling businesses, and schools will promote and encourage safe environmental health practices to manage plastic pollution risks.

CESI Project 3R aims to promote the reduce, reuse and recycle (3R) of plastics to achieve the goal of eliminating plastic pollution in Enugu communities. The project follows a process that begins with advocacy, followed by post-consumer plastic disposal management, and ending with training of children and youth on plastic use.

Our target partners are public authorities, recycling plants, and schools.

• local research (including surveys and opinion polls) on consumer use and disposal of plastics
• installation, maintenance, and disposal of plastic bins in high footfall locations, and
• engagement with public secondary school children as volunteers in plastic disposal
• MOUs for offtakes of end-of-life waste plastics as source materials for production