We reviewed the current state of waste management practices in Nigeria using examples from different parts of the country. Commonly practiced waste disposal methods in Nigeria, such as burial, open-air burning, and open dumping, were found to be ineffective and detrimental to public health and the environment. It was also shown that waste management cannot be successfully operated as a social service. Rather, the generator of waste must be held responsible. Problems confronting efficient waste management in Nigeria include the proliferation of unplanned settlements, traffic congestion, insecurity, and ignorance. An experimental model being used in Lagos State for the management of wastes may be the solution. Given the rate of population growth, industrialization, and urbanization, forward-looking and effective waste management plans need to be set in motion for the protection of public health. Such plans must involve all stakeholders, including the waste generators, the private sector, the informal sector, and regulatory agencies.

No particular division between soil science and geology existed as the two sciences emerged at the end of the Enlightenment. An institutional chasm emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, when soil-related research and mapping were placed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture—despite interesting efforts to combine the two led by Eugene Hilgard of Berkeley and John Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey. It is likely that the resulting institutional separation contributed to an academic divergence between the fields, an unfortunate division for both sciences as they contend with emerging problems of societal significance. Soil is the derma of the Earth. It has been suggested that the key attributes that define a soil's quality are its texture, mineralogy, and organically derived components. These are in turn controlled by the variables of lithology, climate, biota, topography, and landform age. The Earth is tectonically active, and thus stable, level landscapes are rare. The rates and processes by which soil is eroded from sloping lands, and replaced by the disruption of underlying rock into soil material contribute to the nature of the soil composition. James Hutton long ago recognized that these counteracting processes are largely in balance in many locations, leading to a local quasi-steady state, or in the terms of environmental vernacular: sustainability. Soils on hillslopes also have certain features characteristic of resilience, a feature where changes in the relative rates of either erosion or soil production produce feedbacks that in turn control the rate of the opposing process. The major geological force capable of disrupting the soil and geomorphic resilience is the array of human activities, particularly cultivation. Cultivation removes vegetative cover and changes the mechanisms of soil transport, which can then rapidly accelerate erosion beyond the capability of soil production. Cultivation also greatly changes the rates of organic matter inputs and losses, generally resulting in large reductions in the soil's store of C, N, and other elements associated with humus. Yet much remains to be understood about these and other problems. Multidisciplinary work involving the reconnection of the geosciences and soil science will result in more holistic means of sustainably managing a cultivated planet.