Rite Foods Limited, in its campaign towards conserving the environment, is celebrating the recovery of 100,000 plastic bottles from Lagos shorelines.

To achieve this, the Nigerian food and beverage industry player sponsored an initiative, riteonthebeach, aimed at cleaning the country’s beaches, and has already recovered 100,000 plastic bottles from Lagos shorelines.

Launched in August 2021 by Rite Foods’ Managing Director, Mr. Seleem Adegunwa, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project went live in the Lagos beach communities in January 2022.

To date, the communities have removed over 100,000 bottles from their beaches with school children taking the responsibility of dropping off 22 bottles or 1kg of plastics before school each day.

Through the beach cleaning initiative, 74 scholarships and over 20 jobs have been created from the collection and recycling process, spearheaded by the Founder of Popbeachclub, Mr. Akin Disu.

The project is also sensitising the public to the effect of climate change and plastic pollution on the environment, especially in the remote Lagos fishing communities of Ilashe, Ibeshe and Ikaare.

In partnership with Disu, Riteonthebeach created the Plastic Neutral Token, a community-driven social enterprise system that encourages members of the public to take responsibility for the plastic waste they produce, as the average human being uses 84 kilogrammes of plastic yearly.

By members of the public buying a plastic-neutral token, the scheme will remove 84kgs of plastic from the ocean, thereby making it plastic-neutral and eco-friendly.

The plastic waste is processed and sent to the city for recycling, with the entire process verified by a third party and tracked on its transparent online platform. They achieve this by engaging these remote coastal fishing villages, rewarding the children with scholarships, while the women and youth were provided with jobs. This is to save the fishing ecosystem under threat from extensive ocean waste from the city.

The fishing communities serve a crucial role in the Lagos economy, providing fish and tourism services for the city. These coastal communities on the Lagos western peninsula are separated from the city by the Owo river basin watershed, with the residents under a constant deluge of plastic waste transported by the ocean to their doorsteps.

The Riteonthebeach is committed to creating 300 scholarships in two years, in partnership with the coastal communities removing one metric tonen of plastic per week, thereby attaining sustainability.