Circular Economy Business Integration

Mujidah is a Sustainability Educator & Strategist working for social, environmental & economic sustainability in communities, organisations & public institutions, supporting them to make more the best of what the environment offers.

She also works with schools, teaching students the values and motivation to take actions for environmental and social sustainability through practical environmental education. With teachers she works with them to develop startegies of incorporating sustainability in their teaching methods.

A Commonwealth Alumni of Masters in Education for Sustainability from the London South Bank University, Mujidah holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Ibadan and a Higher National Diploma in Computer science from The Polytechnic, Ibadan.
She is the founder of The Sustainability Hub as well as a UNWomen's EmpowerWomen Champion for Change, the Bank PHB (Now Keystone Bank) Award for service excellence and Stanbic IBTC Recognition for Quality Service Award. 

In Nigeria, over 95% of companies operate without concern for the environment, host community or worker's welfare. The effects of the unsustainable production practices and resource inefficiency are evident in the myriad of environmental hazards and health issues we face today.

From bio-systems and clean technologies to resource-productive and low-carbon operations, accelerating to a low-carbon and sustainable growth is one of the most pressing challenged facing businesses today. 

Through an iterative process of education, assessment, strategy and evaluation, we support organisations to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use for a longer time while regenrating natural systems. This increases profitability, brand loyalty and sustainability.

The host community benefits by having less environmental and health hazards arising from indutrial pollution. The larger environment enjoys more biodiversity while mitigating the incidence of climate change and global warming.

With an average PM2.5 concentration of 44.84, Nigeria is the tenth-most polluted country in the world. Nigeria produces over 3 million tons of waste every year, with uncontrolled waste burning being one of the largest contributors to poor air quality. Indoor air pollution is also a large problem in Nigeria as well, with many households have a fine particulate matter level 20 times higher than the air quality guidelines. In the last 30 years, the number of deaths from air pollution has increased by 40% in Nigeria.

Pollution of air, water and land is responsible for thousands of deaths each year, largely due to industrial waste. High cost of recyclable options, lack of education and technical abilities, increasing dependency on fossil fuels for energy uses are some of the causes of resource inefficiency in companies and organisations.

From the extractive to the manufacturing and commercial firms, sustainable environmental management practices are rarely upheld in Nigeria. This takes tolls socio-economic on the living standards of people, making them more vulnerable as over half of the population live on less than 2 dollars per day. It also increases the firms' overheads which could have been avoided from the product(service) design.

The project works with organisations to assess their core operations,relationships with the supply chain partners, and their value propositions towards customers to develop a new concept that reduces consumption of natural resources while preserving the environment. 

Our work goes through four (iterative) stages:

1. Education: Understanding that not all organisations are aware of the circular economy yet in Nigeria, we educate the organisations using a generic and unique set of tools to explain what the circular economy is and how it can benefit the organisation specifically.

2. Assessment: We then move on to evaluating the business model, checking for loopholes in their operations and supply chain. This helps our strategy of moving from the traditional take-make-waste, linear economy to the circular economy.

3. Strategy: With the assessment results, we work with the operations and management teams to design an improved product cycle which will be resource-effcient, low-carbon and more profitable to the firm, reduce the negative externalities of their operations on their host community while increasing profits.

4. Evaluation: The new business model will be tested for efficiency and pofitability in its pilot phase, subjected to iterative tweaks to get the most effective and efficient model for all stakeholders.

a

b

c FRom linear to ciculr

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e

f

g

i

$500      - Share Yourself - Grant, January, 2020

$2160    - Accountability Lab, Nigeria - Grant, March-August, 2020

$500      - Accountability Lab, USA - Grant, May, 2020

$500      - Revenue from education and consultancin services offered.

Four thousand dollars only.