By the end of this century, our planet will be home to another four billion people, with Africa’s population nearly tripling and making up almost half the world’s population. This surge in population will drive a range of urbanization challenges across the continent’s biggest cities, the most pressing of which include the availability of clean, safe drinking water and the need to manage the waste footprint amid a limited recycling infrastructure.
Perhaps nowhere across Africa are these issues more pressing than in Nigeria, where an estimated 29% of the population lacks access to clean water. While this statistic has improved significantly over the years, it is still entirely unacceptable. This absence of potable drinking water has led to water sachets, heat-sealed plastic sleeves of drinking water, becoming a fundamental, affordable and readily available source of drinking water in millions of Nigerian’s everyday lives. However, this widespread consumption has also caused the unintended consequence of environmental pollution due to inadequate waste management infrastructure and poor waste disposal behavior.