A RECYCLING SYSTEM
Recycling is something that isn’t really prominent in my country. Not as though we don’t recycle at all, but the knowledge of recycling isn’t just widely spread around here. The average Nigerian would trash a plastic bottle instead of recycling it. This is why local recyclers would have to go to refuse dumps to get these bottles and this is why I hardly buy things that I know are packaged using recycling methods. The recycling system in the country is very poor and the two sets of people that are mostly into it are the northerners or those who sell our local drinks. Coca-cola also recycles but I have seen a number of things about their system that makes me think twice about recycling.
I remember some years back before I stopped buying drinks in breakable bottles. I got a drink and decided to just open and drink only for me to discover some dead cockroaches inside the cover of the bottle. After I poured out the contents of the drink, I discovered another big cockroach inside. If I had not looked inside the cover of the drink searching for something to win, I would have not discovered the cockroaches inside the drink. It was a close call for me that day and then it happened again that same week when I found a dead spider after pouring the drink inside a cup. Since then I stopped buying drinks packaged in such bottles.
I have also had bad experiences with the local drinks and that is the reason I do not like buying food packaged in recycled containers. There seems to be an issue with nutrition and hygiene. Technically those collecting these bottles do not often look clean, and the places they collect them from is worse making it hard for me to trust those involved in the recycling process to do a good job. Recycling for me isn’t the issue but hygiene. There is no need recycling an Item that would be harmful to one's health when reused and that does not just involve drink bottles.
There is an area in my city where the northerners collect used cooking utensils, refurbish them and sell them at a cheaper rate. One time my neighbour asked me to get a pot from those people because I was going to that area. After I got it, my neighbor started complaining of the pot leaking when he was using it to fry. His gas cylinder had nearly exploded after the oil touched it and he was lucky to notice it on time. This just proves my point about recycling, even though it's good, if it’s not done professionally, it can be risky to use and that is why I do not advise the use of it around here. The fact that our society sucks at personal hygiene is the reason I don’t advise it over here. I would probably use recycled items in places I can trust the recycling processes, but over here, I just can’t take the risk. If hygiene isn’t an issue, then quality would be an issue and trusting the process here is usually risky.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 160 EPISODE 2
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I'm sorry you had to go through the situation of finding cockroaches in your drink. Here in my country I've already experienced this, and a bag of popcorn had cockroaches in it. It was a horrible experience as a child. Nowadays, these problems still happen, but I've never seen anything like them again. And nowadays, the industry has processes to sanitize packaging efficiently, especially pet bottles for drinks, at least in my country.
Especially those bottles for zobo and kunu. Some people pick it from the hospital and reuse without proper treatment
Kunu, Zobo, 😂. We buy and drink in hot and scorching sun. But I think some among them not all are those who pick. There are many others who use new and sealed bottles for their packages. Though the sacrifice is that it comes costly. But really worth it.