“From nature 🌱 to your home 🏠”, quips Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro, while sharing photos from her clients showing off the eco-friendly and elegant woven water hyacinth area rugs purchased from her company, MitiMeth.
Achenyo is the founder of MitiMeth – an indigenous, award winning social enterprise that creates hand-crafted products made from water weeds (water hyacinth, typha grass) and other agricultural residues.
The focus of MitiMeth is to drastically reduce weed infestation and congestion that are commonplace on Nigeria’s waterways (lagoons, rivers and creeks) in order to provide riverine communities with increased access to water bodies for fishing and other livelihood activities – while simultaneously putting in place alternate income generating opportunities through a “transforming-weed-to-handicraft” product development process.
These handicrafts include an incredible range of home décor and personal accessories, produced by local hands.
Resource & Context
- This floating flower is beautiful—but it’s wreaking havoc on Nigeria: In many parts of the world, water hyacinths are a noxious invasive weed that’s tricky to tame. But Nigerian entrepreneurs have come up with innovative ways to turn the plant into useful products [National Geographic]