Meet Scrapays, a Nigerian Startup that Wants to Make you an avid Waste Recycler

In a country with a population of 200 million people like Nigeria, inadequate waste management can be a serious problem. This is mainly due to the fact that there is just too much waste generated every second of every day. The Waste Management Society of Nigeria (WAMASON) estimates that nearly 65 million tonnes of waste are generated in the country per annum. As a result, it is not uncommon to see different kinds of waste materials piled up in major city centres for days due to poor waste management.

Agreed, some efforts have been made by both the government and the private sector to address the problem, but much to very little success. This is why we are excited to learn that a new company called Scrapays Technologies Limited has emerged o the scene with an innovative idea that could help. The truth is that Nigeria needs all the help it can possibly get in order to manage its waste problems. So, welcome onboard, Scrappays.

Here’s what we know

Scrappays is a clean-tech startup which combines technology and finance to encourage households and businesses to sell their recycled waste. The startup claims it does this very conveniently, a claim we are yet to verify. However, it is important to note that this business model is similar to what Wecyclers has successfully been doing for years.

The startup, which was co-founded in 2019 by Tope Sulaimon, Boluwatife Arewa, and Olumide Ogunleye, combines Internet of Things (IoT), mobile app, USSD, and web app to drive the recycled waste collection process. Households and businesses can use any of the mediums mentioned above to contact Scrapaays’ agents/collectors to come remove their recycled waste. And in so doing, they conveniently earn money from recycling.

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One of Scrapays’ Co-founders, Tope Sulaimon, recently spoke to Disrupt Africa about their business and the problem they are trying to solve. He said:

“With over 85 percent of recyclable materials produced not recovered, waste generation volume is expected to quadruple over the next three decades. The collection deficit is growing astronomically and correspondingly increasing the market size. Nigeria has the fastest growing waste production rate in Sub-Saharan Africa and existing recovery models in the market focus only on producer compensation, and this has not been self-propagating across income classes.

“The decentralized recovery network follows an architecture that allows individuals to list their open space as a Recyclable Hosting Location – call it AirBnB for recyclables. This hosting location is managed by vendors, and our collectors are the mobile riders with their devices, who are connected to producers for pickup and to vendors for drop off within their mapped zone – call this “Uber for recyclables.”