‘It gets your stomach churning’: the team wading through nappies to clean up Bali’s waterways – the Guardian

Plastic bags, bottles and other trash entangled in spent fishing nets litter the potentially beautiful Jimbaran beach on the island of Bali, Indonesia (by Onny Carr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Every week, the Sungai Watch staff don waders and gloves and plunge into the waterways around the Indonesian island of Bali, where they have strung up their big plastic barriers. Along with volunteers, they work their way through the heaps of waste that has built up against the barriers, stuffing it into rubbish bags and slowly, steadily, clearing the filth. The work is gruelling, and yet there is deep satisfaction, even if just temporarily, in watching the rivers open up again. “You do get used to it, strangely enough. But you always need at least a few minutes to adapt as you go into a river….”

Hann Bay, Senegal: from coastal idyll to industrial dumping ground – in pictures – the Guardian

Burning garbage on beach of Hann Bay (Peter A. Harrison CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

It’s mid-morning on a sunny day and Yvette Yaa Konadu Tetteh’s arms and legs barely make a splash as she powers along the blue-green waters of the River Volta in Ghana. This is the last leg of a journey that has seen Tetteh cover 450km (280 miles) in 40 days to become the first person known to swim the length of the waterway.

It’s an epic mission but with a purpose: to find out whatis in the water and raise awareness of pollution in Ghana…