Coca-Cola, SWEEP Foundation Take ‘Green Campus Project’ To UNIBEN

The Green Campus Project will be officially flagged off at the University of Benin on Tuesday, December 12, 2023 in collaboration with the University of Benin and Natural Eco Capital, as the local implementing partner.

The project at UNIBEN became imperative given that plastic waste in higher institutions has become problematic and pose a serious environmental dilemma for inhabitants of university campuses and communities. Plastics decompose very slowly as average plastic bottle takes up to 450 years. So they tend to stick around if not recycled properly. Over time, plastics kill animals and harm human health.

Higher institutions, as change agents in the society, play a central role in supporting students to forge more sustainable and inclusive societies necessary towards tackling plastic pollution. With each student producing approximately 0.59kg of waste, university campuses/communities produce approximately 1,062,000kg of waste materials daily of which 12% is recyclable waste.
Ambassador Obuesi Phillips, the President/CEO of SWEEP Foundation, in a press statement, said

University campuses/communities therefore suffer from indiscriminate waste disposal habits of staff and students, occasioned by low – level awareness, and inadequate drainage infrastructure. (Dumping of refuse along street corners within campuses, around hostels, lecture rooms and halls of residence thereby constituting serious environmental health hazard as these serve as home for vermin such as flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches and other vectors of infectious disease).

To address these challenges, university campuses will need comprehensive recyclable waste management programs that provide tracking, reporting and awareness for the benefits of University communities.

Thus, the Green Campus Project will implement a Recyclable Waste Reduction Program that will establish sustainable recyclable drop-off points (recycle banks) and deployment of mobile recyclable collection receptacles across selected university campuses, while at the same time, providing sustainable livelihood opportunities for students and youth resident around target campus communities.
Through the initiative and collaboration with other education organisations and funded by The Coca Cola Foundation, The Green Campus Project seeks to provide waste and environmental education, establish university campus community drop-off points/infrastructure (community recycling hubs), and using this as a sustainable means of livelihood for the campus community youth.

Committed to the ‘World Without Waste’ through improved collection of discarded plastic bottles, campus community recycling outreach campaigns; The Coca Cola Foundation is funding a pilot Campus-Wide Collection Scheme. The Green Campus Project will cut across five universities and their communities including University of Ibadan, University of Benin, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, University of Portharcourt and Obafemi Awolowo University.

The Green Campus Project as an initiative developed by SWEEP Foundation and funded with grants from The Coca Cola Foundation hopes to, among other things, help undergraduates learn about environment and conservation, help campus administrators lower garbage related costs, reduce the amount of garbage burned or buried in the ground, lower or totally eliminate need for garbage incineration on campus, support 250 students in campus-based recycling/waste collection, establish recyclable waste drop-off centers across the campus, help University campuses/communities embrace recycling, 250 youth collectors/recyclers gain livelihood opportunities collecting PETs/managing drop-off centers, help in reducing the number of infectious disease on Campus and finally help in eliminating waste blocking campus drainage systems.

Through this initiative, The Coca Cola Foundation in collaboration with SWEEP Foundation and Recycledge, its local implementing partner in Ibadan will be mobilizing corporate businesses, government agencies, the media and other stakeholders to harness the power of partnership in addressing the plastic waste challenge in the University of Ibadan and its surrounding communities particularly.