Helping people, changing lives.
At Riteonthebeach, we are building regenerative coastal communities and cultural tech hub that uses blockchain to power environmental action, local storytelling and sustainable tourism. bridging Web3 innovation with real-world impact across Africa’s shoreline.
We are addressing the disconnection between coastal conservation, local livelihoods, and digital innovation. Coastal communities face rising pollution, youth unemployment, and under-representation. Meanwhile, global climate and cultural initiatives often overlook these frontline regions. Riteonthebeach solves this by using blockchain to fund green jobs, token-gated storytelling and community-led regeneration, turning neglected shorelines into hubs of creativity, sustainability, and economic opportunity.
We started in 2021 by setting up recycling ecosystems in host coastal communities which lack disposal infrastructure and have high rates of pollution and poverty. Then set up collection locations and employ citizens of those regions to manage these ecosystems. And finally created a social enterprise where the profits are used to provide scholarships for primary school education.
Riteonthebeach is working to encourage behavioral change, unravel the paradox of value, stop ocean plastic, increase literacy and empower communities through employment. We took our first steps by enabling the exchange of waste plastic for education scholarships, revealing the true value of the material, turning tangible plastic into intangible education, encouraging communities to recover the ocean plastic from the beach.
This first phase empowers recycling ecosystems in the communities we operate in, developing ecological awareness, creating jobs, supporting grassroots education, driving responsible economic development in underprivileged communities, and cleaning up our beaches.
Data has been the compass of our journey. It’s what made us believe against the odds that we could clean the beach.
Today, we estimate that over 1,820 tons of plastic remain along our shores, about 26 tons per kilometer. Much of it is buried, broken down, hard to reach, and of little commercial value. But its impact is unmistakable.
What we’ve learned is that true change begins at the edge of belief. And at Riteonthebeach, that edge is where community, science, and spirit meet. For the past four years, our movement has grown into a living experiment in what’s possible — powered by data, and driven by people.
Graduates, students, volunteers, scavengers known locally as “Aboki”, local hosts and youth corps members… together, they form a human ecology as vital as the natural one we’re protecting.
Through our collaborations over the years, with our host communities, the University of Lagos, the National Youth Service Corps, GIZ, OMNIK ltd and 350 residents later, we’ve transformed data into action — and action into celebration. From cleanups to symposiums, field labs to beach residencies, Riteonthebeach is more than an initiative. It’s a festival of imagination — a living classroom by the sea.
Our field site for the beach cleanups — a narrow 250-meter corridor of the coastline — connects ocean to lagoon, a vital link for wildlife. Over the past two years, our monthly interventions have cleared over 3 tons of waste here alone. The result?! black-shouldered kites and yellow-billed kites have returned in visible numbers — apex predators whose presence tells us the system is healing.
This is what a clean coastline makes possible.
The yearly environmental report gives us an overview of the current state of the beach in addition to the data got from mapping the Badagry Watershed and the community interaction reports amongst other reports across the years form the foundational data that validates the findings of the feasibility report, allowing us imagine a vision for a very different Ilashe. For once we can see clearly, where alliances with data can create immense value not only for the people in Ilashe but Lagos as a whole.
Plastic collected by Riteonthebeach is recycled by our recycling partners who certify our collection, this enables us to provide offset plans to organizations who want to create a more sustainable, eco-friendly, and socially responsible supply chain for their products through our plastic neutral certificate scheme.
“The value of Social Plastic® goes beyond the commodity price of plastic: a ladder of opportunity is created for the world’s impoverished and our oceans are protected from pollution” plastic bank.
Design and Development Associates the parent company of Riteonthebeach hopes to use its years of hands-on experience and knowledge of local communities to create an impact in the lives of a generation using data and the power of community as fulcrum and lever. In doing this, we hope to help create replicable and sustainable systems especially in coastal communities that will bring about behavioral change and achieve set SDGs.
