Our website use cookies to improve and personalize your experience and to display advertisements (if any). Our website may also include cookies from third parties like Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Youtube. By using the website, you consent to the use of cookies.

Nigeria’s street food adds to the plastic problem – green leaves offer a solution

Nigeria’s street food adds to the plastic problem – green leaves offer a solution

STREET food is popular in Nigerian cities. Most of the local food delicacies are sold by vendors whose livelihoods depend on informal subsistence activities such as local food production and street food hawking. They are part of Nigeria’s vast informal sector, which accounts for 57.7% of the country’s economy. But most food prepared by vendors has to be consumed within a short time to avoid spoilage. Refrigeration capacity is limited because of unreliable power supplies in the country. Author OBIORA EZEUDU, Research Associate, University of Nigeria The popularity of food sold by street vendors is part of a global shift…
Read More
Congolese city turns its plastic problem into profit

Congolese city turns its plastic problem into profit

IN Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the thousands of plastic bottles thrown into the Ruzizi River routinely clog the hydropower station's turbines, shutting it down for months at a time and plunging the city into darkness. But for Elie Mapenzi Matabaro, the city's plastic problem is an asset, allowing him to both make money and create jobs for young people. Seven years ago, his company, FDA Group, started transforming the bottles and other city waste into cheap, hard-wearing paving slabs that grace driveways and forecourts across the city. "There was no system for protection of the environment. We started…
Read More