Stephanie Linus Daily

Tag: Environment

  • From Waste To Wealth: Let’s Recycle Plastics & Save Our Environment

    As we draw closer to the festive season, I’m encouraging increased recycling of plastic waste which happens to be an incredibly significant cause of environmental and health hazards in our communities.

    With more than 32 million metric tonnes of waste generated in Nigeria annually, and a disturbing habit of improper disposal of this waste, there is an urgent need to address this problem. As a strong advocate for proper environmental protection, I’m encouraging Nigerians to embrace recycling as a means of turning bottles, packaging and other post consumer packaging waste into new products. We can prevent ourselves from harming our environment and needlessly overfilling our landfills by simply giving up our plastic waste for recycling.

    The Christmas holiday season is usually characterized by increased generation of waste especially plastic waste across the country. From individually packaged food servings to beverage bottles, more plastic waste is generated during this season than ever before. In this season, I hope people lean more towards recycling as a means of proper disposal of plastic waste.

    In addition to the benefits of protecting our environment, recycling plastics helps us conserve natural resources and creates new economic opportunities for our population. For easier participation, interested residents are encouraged to register with a recycling venture near you or take the plastic waste to a drop-off site within your community. 

    As consumers, we play a more critical role than we can imagine. Recycling makes a huge difference to our environment, our quality of life, and our country’s future.

  • My Inspiration Behind The Hygiene First Campaign

    Ever since the launch of the “Hygiene First – My New Habit” Campaign, I have been inundated with a lot of questions about the inspiration behind it.

    First off, I want to thank you all for your support and encouragement. It means a lot to me that the feedback from everyone has been very positive. I’m glad that we all recognize the importance of practicing good hygiene in our homes and communities.

    So, back to my inspiration. I was recently asked this question in an interview with ThisDay and I want to share that response with you today. Here it goes:

    I could name several habits we collectively practice that got me seriously thinking about this, but the most important thing that struck me is this: we’ve settled for less as a people. We don’t demand better because we don’t even know that we deserve better in our society. We’re not paying attention to certain actions, which eventually become our habits and have huge consequences on our lives. There’s something fundamentally wrong with our thought process that needs to be fixed.

    The whole essence of this campaign is to awaken our consciousness about our personal and community hygiene. We want people to pay better attention to the habits that affect our health and environment and make better choices. It starts with our behavior. We want everyone to know that the cleanliness of our environment is not someone else’s responsibility. It is our collective responsibility as Nigerians to put in the work and achieve clean and healthy communities that we’re all proud of.  

    Several years ago, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Calabar and I didn’t know while studying that I’ll end up running a national campaign on hygiene. The need for this is urgent and its benefits would be widespread.

    Read the full interview HERE