FBRA Advocates Sectoral Synergy On Waste Management

The Food & Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA) has called for sector specific platforms to drive the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy on waste management.
The Director, Public Affairs and Communication, Coca-Cola West Africa, Mr Clem Ugorji, made the call in a statement to newsmen in Lagos last Tuesday.
The Tide source reports that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that shifts the cost of waste management or physical collection of wastes partially or fully from government to producers of wastes.
According to him, various sectors of the economy can rise to the challenge of establishing sector specific platforms to drive the recovery and recycling of waste items in their respective packaging streams.
Ugorji said that FBRA evolved from a self-regulatory initiative that Coca-Cola began in 2005 to set up a large scale recovery and buyback scheme for PET bottles which were recycled into synthetic fibre.
He said that in 2012, Coca-Cola reached out to other leading beverage companies to form a voluntary group comprising Coca-Cola, Nestle, Nigerian Breweries and Seven-Up Bottling Company.
He said that the group became the nucleus of the FBRA that served as the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) for the food and beverage sector.
Ugorji said that FBRA was presented as a case study at 2nd National Waste Management Conference of how forward-looking industries could collaborate with other stakeholders to develop solutions for mitigating environmental impact of their activities.
He said that FBRA’s mission was to recover and recycle food and beverage packaging waste to create a sustainable recycling economy that would stimulate employment, innovation and wealth creation.