As Nigeria’s population expands projected by the United Nations Population Fund to surpass 237 million by 2025 the country’s waste burden continues to rise sharply. The World Bank estimates that Nigeria generates more than 32 million tonnes of solid waste annually, placing mounting pressure on already strained municipal systems and underscoring the urgent need for sustainable, scalable waste management solutions.
One of the most far-reaching responses to this challenge has been the adoption of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework. Introduced in 2014 by the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), the policy marked a paradigm shift by assigning producers greater responsibility for the lifecycle of their packaging. Out of this framework emerged the Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA) in 2018 the country’s first Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) dedicated to the food and beverage sector.
From a modest beginning with four founding companies, FBRA has grown into a formidable coalition of 49 member organisations as of November 2025. Together, the Alliance has built a coordinated system for the recovery, recycling and circular management of post-consumer packaging waste. Its impact is measurable: more than 100,000 metric tonnes of plastic waste have been recovered from the environment, reframing waste from an environmental burden into a valuable input for Nigeria’s emerging circular economy.
“FBRA may not be a household name, but its footprint is evident in cleaner communities and the growing empowerment of waste collectors, particularly across Lagos State,” said Victoria Uwadoka, Corporate Communications, Public Affairs and Sustainability Lead at Nestlé Nigeria.
As one of Nigeria’s largest and most trusted food and beverage companies, Nestlé Nigeria has positioned environmental stewardship as a core business priority alongside people and profit. The company was a founding member of FBRA and has remained one of its most consistent champions, leveraging collaboration to drive sector-wide change.
“While we may compete commercially as producers, we come together as collaborators when it comes to our shared environmental responsibilities,” Uwadoka explained.
This spirit of collaboration has underpinned Nestlé Nigeria’s leadership in packaging innovation and waste recovery. In December 2023, the company achieved a major milestone by attaining 100 per cent plastic neutrality recovering and recycling an amount of plastic equivalent to what it introduced into the Nigerian market. The achievement signalled a decisive commitment to accountability across the value chain.
Nestlé further broke new ground by becoming the first company in Nigeria to integrate 50 per cent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) into its Nestlé Pure Life water bottles, in full compliance with the Standards Organisation of Nigeria’s food-grade packaging requirements. Rather than a one-off intervention, the initiative reflects a sustained push toward circularity one that remains a benchmark for the industry.
Through FBRA’s operating model, Nestlé Nigeria and other producers have helped activate the entire waste value chain, from informal collectors to recyclers and processors. The result is a system where plastics are retrieved from the environment, transformed into new materials and reintegrated into production cycles creating jobs and economic value along the way.
“Manufacturers do not produce plastics to litter the streets,” Uwadoka noted. “Consumers discard them, but FBRA ensures that the waste is recovered, creating livelihoods and value in the process.”
She stressed that circularity remains central to Nestlé’s sustainability strategy. “Every bottle recovered and kept out of the ocean is one less environmental problem. Closing the loop is the goal not just collecting waste, but ensuring it is used, recovered, transformed and reused.”
The partnership between Nestlé Nigeria and FBRA illustrates the power of industry led collaboration in tackling environmental challenges. Through shared responsibility, sustained investment and innovation, both organisations are helping to reshape Nigeria’s waste management landscape while aligning with broader global sustainability goals.
As Nestlé Nigeria continues to lead efforts to close the loop, and FBRA strengthens the link between producers, collectors and recyclers, one message stands out: building a cleaner, more sustainable Nigeria is a collective task and tangible progress is already being made.