Freee Recycle Restricted, an built-in waste recycling and manufacturing firm, has commemorated its fifth anniversary of advancing sustainability, innovation, and round financial system development within the nation with artwork exhibition.
With the theme:, “From Waste to Heritage: Celebrating 5 Years of Affect,” the occasion featured the revealing of an artwork exhibition showcasing works from its maiden Artwork Residency Programme — a five-week artistic residency themed “Echoes of Reclamation: Rebuilding Heritage from Waste.”
The residency educated artists from tertiary establishments throughout Nigeria to re-imagine waste supplies and create cultural worth from discarded supplies representing a key step in FREEE Recycle’s mission to remodel Nigeria’s waste panorama by merging creative creativity with sustainable, round options.
The exhibition, which featured sculptures and mixed-media installations crafted from recycled tyre rubber, additionally served a philanthropic function. All proceeds from the exhibition will go towards offering college sandals to kids in underserved communities by means of the FREEE Affect Basis — extending the residency’s message of transformation from artwork areas to lecture rooms throughout Nigeria.
It Managing Director, Ifedolapo Runsewe, said: “At FREEE, our journey started 5 years in the past with a easy perception — that waste may very well be remodeled into worth and creativity may drive sustainability.
Recognizing that recycling alone wasn’t sufficient, we developed our Built-in Recycling and Manufacturing (IRM) mannequin, a zero-waste system that turns each a part of a tyre into one thing helpful. Since then, we’ve recycled over 250,000 tyres, produced 660 metric tonnes of crumb rubber, and lower carbon emissions by greater than 8,000 tonnes. Past these milestones, we’ve created jobs, constructed partnerships, and impressed change — extending our affect by means of initiatives just like the FREEE Artwork Residency, the place artists reimagine waste as a software for expression and social transformation. As we glance torward 5 years, we stay pushed by one dedication to proceed reworking waste and galvanizing futures. The subsequent section of FREEE’s journey will deepen our investments in innovation, neighborhood affect, and artistic engagement — constructing a bridge between sustainability and tradition that defines a brand new legacy for Africa’.
Coverage adviser, Financial Affairs and Public Diplomacy Officer, Netherlands Consulate in Lagos, Opeyemi Oriniowo famous:“What we see right here right now is greater than recycling — it’s innovation, creativity, and function coming collectively. The wonderful work that FREEE Recycling is doing, turning waste tyres into new merchandise, reveals what’s doable when imaginative and prescient meets collaboration. Earlier this 12 months, we visited the ability in Ibadan as a part of a broader scoping mission to grasp what entrepreneurs throughout Nigeria are doing on this house. I can say confidently that FREEE has develop into a mannequin — or as I prefer to joke, a little bit of a poster baby — for what’s doable when sustainability is handled not as a mission however as a mindset. The actual problem earlier than us is how we replicate this affect, how we create extra of this — extra FREEE Recycles throughout Nigeria, every creating jobs, driving change, and shaping the longer term.”
One of many collaborating artists, shared: Reward Akwajie mentioned,“It was a very fantastic expertise,” she mentioned. “Sustainability and local weather change are causes which might be very near my coronary heart, and being a part of this residency allowed me to discover them by means of artwork in a significant method. I’m deeply grateful to the school and to Mrs. Ifedolapo for giving us this chance — I might genuinely do all of it over once more.”
