Can the Lagos waste problem be solved?
A product designer's perspective
Waste is sometimes one of the complex things that a city must fix or treat seriously for the general well-being of its citizens. The Nigerian waste situation is amok with different policies or strategies to tackle the crisis. In this post, I am focusing on Lagos state waste policy. Lagos state implements a PPP strategy i.e. (Public-Private Partnership) for its waste policy. I could write pages about how this policy works or how the various stakeholders and users interact but I am going to focus on the most basic aspect of the job which is “Waste Collection”
Waste collection can be summed up in the sense of the distribution of bins and the frequent removal of waste in an area but an incident caught my eye while running an errand. I went to a shopping mall in Surulere to get some things and I bought some biscuits too. I went outside of the mall and crossed to the other side. I had time on my side so I trekked to my previous location and I couldn’t find a single bin in sight. I thought, wait a minute. There has to be a bin somewhere, anywhere but the only bins I saw were inside private buildings. I did keep the biscuit nylon to be disposed of later when I had a chance.
Something clicked in my mind though, that a random person won’t have the patience I had and will dispose the nylon on the floor and move on. People will say well that person is irresponsible and they might be right but sometimes when people lack incentives to do things, they do the opposite. Now bear with me, what if we look at waste policy in terms of a user and a user responds to incentives to do positive things and disincentives to do bad things. E.g. What if there was a bin every 40m on the road I piled on, this gives the user the incentive to use the bin at a higher rate than if they were none. etc. If you notice major markets or streets in Lagos that are very dirty lack large or small waste bins for easy disposal of waste.
A user can also respond to public feedback. E.g. people like Instagram posts or retweet tweets based on a need to feel part of the crowd etc. Call it part of the human social connection if you will. If there are enough bins within an area surrounding the user and the user also notices that people are putting waste into the bin, a primal need to belong will prevent the user from littering the floor. In a way, a simple policy change of seeing people as people and implementing policies with respect to those tendencies sound more sensible than just expecting people to be good citizens.
What are your thoughts? Do you have any ideas on we can use product design principles to solve certain problems? Please comment below.