The plethora of environmental issues such as flooding, the release of greenhouse gases via the production of new plastics & open burning of plastic waste, threats to resource sustainability, marine plastic pollution, death of endangered animals, the rise of microplastics and street blithe, etc., have necessitated an investigation of extant roles played by public actors and NGOs in curbing plastic pollution. Using a descriptive case study of environmental NGOs, this interpretivist research investigated how NGOs and government agencies are driving plastic pollution management in Lagos, a coastal Nigerian city. We describe how these formal sector agents liaise with state & national environmental agencies to drive plastic recycling within households, communities and institutions. Questions about ‘who’, ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘challenges’ impacting extant practices were explored and findings suggest strong ongoing re-socialization processes and practices on plastic waste collection and management within households and institutions. Women, youths and school children from low-income and high-income households/neighbourhoods are major agents of this process in different capacities that also meet their varying socio-economic needs. The logic and strategy of meeting needs were unpacked and revealed increasing positive responses to extant sorting and collection initiatives. 4 NGOs and 5 government agencies were purposively selected and investigated via qualitative methods of In-depth interviews (IDI), Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and observation methods using an unstructured interview guide. The respondents were traced via the snowball technique. This study which was conducted as one objective of an ongoing doctoral ethnographic study was informed by the lenses of the Ecological Modernization Theory (EMT) which proposes the investigation of the roles played by various sector actors in environmental management. However, due to EMT’s limitations of technocentrism, under-theorization and poor conceptualization of social processes, as well as the limited number of studies on this phenomenon, findings will be discussed thematically with primary data to produce a grounded theory; an intention to fill the gap of the critique in EMT.

Expected findings

Environmental education

Environmental sanitation advocacy

Community engagement in waste management

Pro-poor eco-social benefits

High impact rate

Behavioural change

Gender target

Children, women and youth inclusion

Plastic waste control policies

gender policy issues

challenges and coping strategies

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