Impact of Plastic Waste Recycling on Sustainable Environmental Management in Nigeria

This study examined the impact of plastic waste recycling on sustainable environmental management in Nigeria. Despite the usefulness of plastics for a variety of purposes in our society, plastic waste poses a paramount challenge for environmentalists, governments, socioeconomics, and organisations, as a good number of plastics wastes are disposed of in non-environmentally friendly manner giving rise to polluted oceans, streams and gutters, overextended landfills and ecological damage. Plastic waste management is a menace to our immediate society and the world at large. Nigeria is highly polluted with plastic waste with Lagos state depositing about 450,000 metric tonnes of plastic waste yearly into the ocean. The challenge of plastic waste pollution is now a worldwide concern, which was why the 2018 Earth Day and World Environment Day were both interested in tackling plastic waste pollution. However, plastic recycling is vital to improving the environment and promoting waste management solutions. In spite of the importance of plastic recycling, effective, sufficient and satisfactory plastic waste gathering and recycling systems for sustainable environmental management are absent in most Nigerian cities. Due to this, cast off plastic always find their way into the environment, affecting the health of both aquatic and land animal including humans, and cause climate change. This paper therefore examined the impact of plastic recycling on sustainable environmental management in Nigeria. Specifically, it explored how mechanical and chemical recycling (the two sub independent variables) impact sustainable environmental management in Nigeria. Circular economy and waste hierarchy theories were adopted to support the study. The paper adopted the correlational research design. simple random sampling techniques were adopted by the study to select two (200) workers of plastic recycling companies such as Rida National Plastics and Alkem Nigeria Limited both located in Lagos, Chanja Datti located in Abuja and Shongai packaging industry LTD located in Ogun State which do both mechanical and chemical recycling and twenty (20) management staff was selected each for the study