Taiwo Irebami at the Ebute-Metta Hub
In 2016 Taiwo Irebami got to know of Wecyclers as “one of the fastest growing recycling firms in Lagos” through a friend. Taking that knowledge to action, Irebami joined the Wecyclers team as a volunteer for the Clean9ja project, leading the Ota recycling movement in the clean9ja campaign of March 2016 which held in 3 cities across the country.
Irebami would then go on to intern with the Wecyclers Data entry department, working tirelessly with the team. His hard work was rewarded in May 2016 when he was appointed a Trainee manager in May and he held this role until December 2016. In December 2016, Wecyclers initiated an expansion drive which has seen an expansion to 2 new local governments and tens of communities across Lagos, this expansion necessitated the employment of new staff and with the zeal and hard work Irebami had shown over the months he was subsequently made Hub manager for the Ebute Metta hub, supervising over 40 staff and been responsible for one of Wecyclers biggest facility.
For Irebami, “working at the Ebute Metta hub is very encouraging, you see your work appreciated and you see what
you do scaling up and increasing the business” Also more rewarding is the fact that almost 5,000Kg of recyclable waste is salvaged daily from the community through this hub. Irebami says managing this team did not come as an easy task for him initially as he had no prior knowledge of running a team but through proper learning and leveraging on the available free flow of communication within the team and the management, he has come to master the art.
Running the team at the hub has him looking and engaging at all levels of the recycling process daily. The collectors with the Wecycles go into the communities to pick the recyclable waste and these waste is sorted by the in house sorters, sorting is done according to colours and materials before the materials are baled for onward transfer to other facilities. This process is done daily with over 40 staff working on this in the hub and Irebami ensures that every step and every task is done seamless with very little downtime and safely and with customer satisfaction as the goal.
On the role of Wecyclers in the community, Irebami says “I imagine the amount of waste we collect and what they could have resulted to in drainages, causing health challenges and it is also a great delight that we are expanding to new communities and driving the recycling agenda in Lagos.
With the demand for wecyclers operation increasing, Irebami says he is faced with the challenge of logistics as the demand far outweighs the capacity the hub can currently handle but with the support of the Lags state Government, Wecyclers is rapidly scaling up to accommodate more communities and even more volume of recyclable waste, given even more value through our incentivized model of recycling and creating a system of Recycling where everyone wins.
