Research Signal – Source date 2025-07-31
Lagos has to make choices about waste at enormous scale, yet the basic quantities and the routes waste takes are difficult to pin down. A 2025 preprint on Nigerian municipal solid waste management brings together reported Lagos figures and proposes a way to connect data, policy, and the people involved in collection and recovery.
The proposal is a narrative review and implementation framework, not a test of a new collection system. Its central idea is that better technology alone cannot settle who collects what, where materials go, or which approach is worth funding. Those decisions depend on seeing the waste system as a whole.
Lagos’s figures describe different parts of the problem
Reports examined by the preprint put Lagos’s daily solid-waste generation at about 13,000 metric tons. For 2021, cited estimates put the share collected and disposed of through appropriate channels at between 33% and 54%. The authors flag that wide range as questionable; even its lower end points to a large amount of waste outside those channels.
The preprint also reports that only 3–6% of plastic waste generated in Lagos is recycled. That figure concerns plastic, while the daily tonnage and collection range concern solid waste more broadly. They describe different stages and materials, so they should not be read as interchangeable measures or as new measurements made by the review’s authors.
The figures raise practical questions. How much waste is produced in each area? What reaches collection? What is sorted or recovered, and what ends up in disposal? The preprint describes gaps in Nigeria’s quantitative waste records, making those questions hard to answer consistently.
Waste decisions are connected across the whole route
A collection decision affects what can later be sorted and recycled. A recycling plan depends on the materials that arrive, while disposal needs and costs depend on what remains. Treating these as separate problems can hide trade-offs: an option that looks attractive at one stage may not make sense once its costs and effects elsewhere are considered.
The authors survey systems models and assessment tools intended to help compare choices across that route. Models can forecast quantities, simulate possible arrangements, estimate costs and benefits, or seek an efficient allocation of resources. Assessment tools can examine material flows, environmental and social effects, risks, and sustainability. Used together, they could help decision-makers compare options against more than one objective rather than relying on a single headline figure.
The challenge is to represent enough of the real system for a comparison to be useful. The preprint notes that modelling can simplify a complicated system, and that decisions involve agencies, communities, formal services, and informal operators. Data science may help combine different kinds of analysis, but it cannot make incomplete records or unclear responsibilities disappear.
Informal collectors are part of material recovery
A plan built around authorised companies alone would miss an influential part of the waste economy. The preprint describes informal waste collectors as significant participants and says they have resisted government efforts to formalise them. It also discusses recycling activity in which informal participants outnumber formally registered processing and recycling entities.
That participation matters to how materials move and are recovered. A model of collection and recycling needs to account for the roles people already play; the people themselves also have interests that cannot be reduced to model inputs. The preprint points to unequal pricing and weak incentives for some workers in the recovery chain as concerns in Lagos. It proposes stakeholder engagement as part of implementation, rather than treating participation as a technical detail to settle after a plan is designed.
Policy clarity would shape who can act
In its reading of Nigeria’s 2020 solid-waste policy, the preprint identifies ambiguity in how responsibilities are assigned across stakeholders. Unclear roles make it harder to coordinate data, enforcement, funding, and operations. The Lagos case also describes problems with adherence to waste-container requirements and collection vehicles that may not preserve separation between waste streams.
The authors propose policy changes and a stakeholder-prioritisation approach to help organise engagement. Their ranking considers factors including power, legitimacy, urgency, technical capacity, resources, and access to data. It is intended to guide which organisations need attention in a data-driven programme. The ranking is a proposed planning aid; it is not evidence that those organisations have adopted the framework or can deliver reform, and its weights have not been shown here as a tested measure of implementation success.
The proposal still needs operational evidence
The preprint is a narrative review that draws on existing studies and reports, and it describes a lack of robust, nationally documented waste data. Its Lagos quantities come from cited reports, including a collection-and-disposal estimate the authors themselves question. This is a useful basis for identifying problems and proposing an approach, but it cannot show that the approach improves collection, recycling, or disposal.
That outcome would require usable local records and evidence from operations: whether the relevant actors can work with clearer responsibilities, whether collectors participate, and whether decisions informed by connected data change what is collected or recovered. The article calls for more empirical research to build that evidence. Its July 2025 publication date is not a claim that the underlying literature search ran through that date.
What better waste decisions could change in Lagos
A connected view of waste flows and stakeholder roles could help Lagos authorities and waste operators direct collection and material recovery toward the places and materials most in need. That capability depends on usable local data, workable institutional responsibilities, participation by collectors, and evidence that the approach improves operations. If those conditions are met, planning could become more responsive to where waste is generated, collected, sorted, and recovered.
Key Sources
- Primary source: Leveraging Data Science Using Systems Theory for Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management in Nigeria: A Narrative Review and Implementation Framework
DOI or Journal Page · Preprint · 2025-07-31
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