With espousing brown recycling in the used lead-acid battery recycling industry, a video showing the importation of used cars and how it adversely affects the environment was documented by HTTV Production Company in partnership with SRADeV Nigeria. The documentary shows different scenes which include a ship fully loaded with cars arriving at the Lagos port, movement of the cars to different dealers or users, markets place for different engine and spare parts, workshops where cars are being taken apart, and so on. All of these shows that used cars are mostly not in good shape as when imported or missing some essential parts such as the catalyst.
In an interview with one of the car dealers selling these used German cars such as Volkswagen, he confirmed that most of the cars don’t come with the catalyst and they remove them from the cars that come with the catalyst. He also mentioned that the catalyst is sold separately to either end-users or retailers from the Ladipo spare part market as seen in the video.
The Executive Director of SRADeV Nigeria, Dr. Leslie Adogame mentioned that these used cars from Germany and Europe are a big problem for Nigeria, as they had to the traffic congestion, and fumes from these cars are covering Lagos roads in a constant cloud of exhaust gases. He also took the team to the Ipetoro community which is termed the poisonous place in Nigeria where a full-scale tragedy of what these used cars causes was seen.
The adverse environmental impact of the importation and selling of these used cars with a shelf life of fewer than 5 years from Germany and Europe are shown in scenes where community members of Ipetoro in Ogijo area of Lagos highlighted how the recycling of some parts of these used cars are affecting their water, soil and the health of the people. A member of the community Mr. Noel Rufus, mentioned that there is hardly anything growing in the fields anymore and what is growing is highly poisoned with lead, all children residing in the community have lead in their bloodstreams. All of these have been captured in the 2017 SRADeV Nigeria’s ULABs report about brown recycling of metal and battery recycling firms in that axis. The report and blood test sampling show contamination of the soil and water of the community which leads to the high amount of lead in the bloodstreams of the habitants is carried out by these metal and battery recycling firms.
Watch the full documentary here: Documentary Video