( CNN ) -- It 's a bright May morning and the purple-shirted army of tricycle drivers is on the streets of Lagos once again . Eyes trained ahead , they zip past traffic on their specially-modified vehicles , dipping in and out of the Nigerian megacity 's slums . This is the mobile division of Wecyclers , an innovative enterprise using an incentive-based program to help solve Lagos 's acute waste management problem . Every week , the company 's cyclists peddle from door to door in low-income neighborhoods to pick up recyclable trash from registered households . Items like plastic bottles , aluminum cans and plastic sachets are all weighed and logged on site , and from there are taken to a specific sorting area where they 're bagged in order to be sold to recycling factories . In return , participating households receive points via SMS . These can eventually be exchanged for rewards , mainly donated items ranging from bowls and blenders to food products and mobile phone air time . `` Every three months they have opportunity to redeem the points for something , '' says Weclycers chief executive Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola . `` So we give them really small gifts that just motivate them and encourage them to recycle . '' Lagos , a sprawling megacity of more than 18 million people , generates a massive 10,000 metric tons of waste daily , according to the city 's waste management authority . Only 40 % of it is believed to be formally collected , leaving large quantities of rubbish blocking gutters and piling up on streets and outside houses -- a major health and environmental hazard . `` Low income communities are the ones that are more affected , '' says Adebiyi-Abiola . `` ( People ) end up living in their waste , so we basically saw that there was a really big need to provide collection services for people that are living in the low-income areas . '' Born and bred in Lagos , Adebiyi-Abiola went to the United States at the age of 17 . There , she trained and worked as a computer scientist , before enrolling to MIT for a masters in business administration . It was during that time , while working on a study project focused on the problems faced by people in low-income areas , when she came up with the idea to launch a company offering waste collection and recycling services in her hometown . `` I really love Lagos and I wanted to do something that would give back to it , '' says Adebiyi-Abiola . `` For me , the environment is really where it all starts , '' she adds . `` When you have a clean environment then you have health , when you have health then you can start thinking about money , jobs and things like that . '' Set up just a year and a half ago , Wecyclers has grown today to have some 5,000 households subscribed to its service . The startup has so far collected nearly 300 tons of waste , using a fleet of 16 low-cost cargo bicycles that are creatively designed to transport large cloth sacks of trash . In regards to recycling as a business , however , there are still many challenges faced by Wecyclers , which is yet to make a profit . `` We hope that as we grow and add value to the material we sell , then we hope to see profits come in , '' says Adebiyi-Abiola , who employs 31 people . Despite the problems , the entrepreneur has big plans for the future . She says she 's determined to keep on working to expand the service across Lagos and beyond and ultimately help to change people 's attitudes toward waste . `` I want to show the whole world that this is something that can succeed , '' says Adebiyi-Abiola . `` That we can create a low-cost way of solving the Nigerian problems , the Lagos problems , here , with Lagos solutions , '' she adds . `` To show that we can have ingenuity and innovation here and almost create a movement around waste and make people realize the importance of recycling and the environment -- I 'm already seeing that but I want to see it on a really big scale all across Nigeria . ''
Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola is the co-founder and CEO of Lagos-based startup Wecyclers . The company was founded in 2014 by Adetunji Akinwole, a former Lagos State government official who has been working on renewable energy projects since he left office in 2013. The Nigerian megacity produces 10,000 metric tons of waste on a daily basis .