She will have crawled 450 kilometers over 40 days, six days a week, with regular 20-minute breaks to take water samples. Objective: to measure the pollution constituted by plastic microfibers from clothes that pile up in Ghanaian landfills.
Article written by
Posted
Update
Reading time : 2 min.
/2023/06/08/648170765fb5e_capture-d-ecran-2023-06-08-080238.jpg)
She arrived to applause on Wednesday May 17 at the mouth of the Volta, on the Atlantic, in the suburbs of Accra, Ghana: Yvette Tetteh achieved a feat and a first, swimming down the Volta , this river which crosses Ghana from north to south before flowing into the Gulf of Guinea. 450 kilometers covered in 40 days, swimming six days a week, with regular breaks of 20 minutes, to drink and eat of course, but above all to do what she decided to do this crossing for: take water samples, fill bottles to have them analyzed and assess the state of pollution of the river.
Because beyond sporting prowess, Yvette Tetteh’s objective was to document the degradation of water quality in recent years, to measure it, to put figures on a real scourge. And the pollution we are talking about is the omnipresence of plastic microfibers, these particles that come from the clothes we wear, we inhabitants of northern countries. For example, this t-shirt that we no longer want and that we will conscientiously put in a clothes box so that it can be used for someone else, has a good chance of ending up in the largest clothing market. of the world: Ghana.
15 million garments per week
Ghana imports some 15 million pieces of clothing each week, and the unsold ones end up in huge landfills, which are now saturated to the point of flowing into the river. 15 million clothes per week, and as much waste in potential. Yvette Tetteh, who started off not as an athlete but as the CEO of a dried fruit company in Accra, decided to get involved. First by getting involved with the Or foundation which raises awareness of the ravages of fast fashion, then by launching this idea of going down the Volta to document pollution.
Yvette Tetteh explains in an open letter published by The Guardian that before, these waters were swimmable, that the Korle lagoon for example which borders the capital Accra was until recently translucent and paradisiacal. She therefore pleads to return to this stage, to protect, to restore. A challenge that begins by drying up the source of pollution, thousands of kilometers from Accra, in the factories that produce hundreds of collections a day. But also here, in our choices, our buying impulses, our desires.