https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/horrific-cost-fast-fashion-exposed-30572053
Garments once worn in the UK now rot in a 30ft-high textile mountain in Ghana’s capital Accra.
The UK’s love of “fast fashion” and disposable garments is fuelling an environmental “catastrophe” in Africa, experts have warned.
Many of the clothes donated in the UK are so cheaply made they can’t be reused. Garments once worn in the UK now rot in a 30ft-high toxic textile mountain in Ghana’s capital Accra.
The Mirror reports that the situation is “an environmental crisis caused by our obsession with fast fashion”.
At a beach in the Jamestown district, near Accra, children are seen playing on a carpet of old clothing, with dozens of garments from popular UK brands including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and New Look.
The clothes were donated to charity shops or put in clothing recycling banks. But the clothing being donated in the UK is cheap and mass produced, leaving Ghana, as the main recipient of the UK’s second-hand items, struggling to cope.
Liz Ricketts, co-founder of The Or Foundation, a non-profit organisation probing the impact of the second-hand clothing trade in Accra, said: “It’s an environmental catastrophe.”
“Fast fashion” is the mass production of cheap clothes to cater to changing trends, with garments often worn just once. Chinese fashion retail website Shein, for example, sells tops for just over £1. However, the desire for cheap, disposable clothes comes at a cost.
With no facilities to deal with it and the official landfill site overflowing, much of the clothing is burnt or left in the gutter. It then ends up in the sea via drains or is dumped at the “textile mountain” at Old Fadama.
Old Fadama houses 40,000 of Accra’s most vulnerable citizens. Waste pickers can be seen searching for scraps to salvage, while livestock also picks away at it. The heap is a huge risk for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, while cholera is an ever-present worry in the river, which overflows with waste.
Kantamanto Market, around two miles away, is full of clothes. There are items from Asos, Tesco and Primark, and even used bras and glasses. It is the world’s largest reuse market, the size of three football pitches.
The 30,000 tailors, seamstresses and dyers at the market reuse the stuff dumped. The garments are known as “obroni wawu” – “dead white man’s clothes”.
However, around 40% is such poor quality it can’t be sold, and leaves as waste. Millions of garments arrive each week at the main port and are sorted into bales. Janet Kyerewaa, 48, sells women’s tops from the UK. She cuts open an 8st bale at 6am, which cost her the equivalent of £208.
A handful of items make it into her first selection, which she can sell for 75p each. Items that need fixing are sold for 12p, while the larger pile, which she called “waste”, is full of “fast fashion” items.
Janet said her sales barely cover her expenses some weeks, and that she is in huge debt. She said: “When I see clothes thrown away it pains me, but we can’t sell this stuff.”
Single use t-shirts from events like stag parties are a problem, as they are cheaply made and cannot usually be sold on.
The Or Foundation does not want to see second-hand imports banned, with over 30,000 jobs in the market and no immediate alternative work.
Joe Ayesu runs the foundation’s beach monitoring programme at Jamestown beach, where there are piles of degraded clothes buried in the sand like rocks. He said: “The second-hand clothing market is not a bad thing but the poor quality of what is being sent here is destroying our beaches.”
Of the £167million of used clothing imported by Ghana almost 40% is from the UK, who is the world’s third-largest exporter of second-hand clothes. However, all the clothing companies in this article say they do not send unused stock to Ghana and that slashing their waste is important.
Textiles Recycling International, which represents the UK’s five largest textile recycling firms, said many issues are due to rogue companies not sorting clothes properly. It added: “If used clothing is exported without being sorted it isn’t surprising items that can’t be worn… will be discarded. The TRI group sorts all products before export to Ghana.”
Sophie De Salis, of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Retailers take their responsibility to tackle textile waste very seriously and are investing millions to divert used clothing away from landfill.”
M&S said: “We make our clothes to last, ensuring our customers can wear them for years and then confidently give them a second life. Our simple commitment is to send no clothes to landfill, ensuring any unsold stock is redistributed to our charity partners.” John Lewis said: “We offer recycling points in all our shops, provide care/repair information on clothing and provide rental options for customers to prolong the lifespan of garments.”
New Look said: “We have partnered with organisations to give pre-loved… clothes a second life. We sell and distribute [leftover stock] to trusted providers. In 2019 we banned partners sending products to Africa to minimise the possibility of our product ending up at landfill sites like this.”
Solomon Noi, director of waste management for Accra Metropolitan Assembly, said: “It’s growing in the sea – turtles can’t come to the beach to lay eggs, the coral is dying, the fishers can’t fish.”
The textiles made for fast-fashion retailers almost all come from China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Asian countries. On average, clothing is worn seven times in the UK before it is binned or donated, but increasingly items are worn just once.
Garments are sorted for eastern European countries and Africa, after being packed into bales and loaded into shipping containers
Bales are shipped to the recipient country via an importer, then on to retailers to sell at shops or markets. The waste may be distributed for use as rags or cloths, but is often burnt or dumped at landfill or other unofficial sites. See
Single use t-shirts from events like stag parties are a problem, as they are cheaply made and cannot usually be sold on.
The Or Foundation does not want to see second-hand imports banned, with over 30,000 jobs in the market and no immediate alternative work.
Joe Ayesu runs the foundation’s beach monitoring programme at Jamestown beach, where there are piles of degraded clothes buried in the sand like rocks. He said: “The second-hand clothing market is not a bad thing but the poor quality of what is being sent here is destroying our beaches.”
Of the £167million of used clothing imported by Ghana almost 40% is from the UK, who is the world’s third-largest exporter of second-hand clothes. However, all the clothing companies in this article say they do not send unused stock to Ghana and that slashing their waste is important.
Textiles Recycling International, which represents the UK’s five largest textile recycling firms, said many issues are due to rogue companies not sorting clothes properly. It added: “If used clothing is exported without being sorted it isn’t surprising items that can’t be worn… will be discarded. The TRI group sorts all products before export to Ghana.”
Sophie De Salis, of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Retailers take their responsibility to tackle textile waste very seriously and are investing millions to divert used clothing away from landfill.”
M&S said: “We make our clothes to last, ensuring our customers can wear them for years and then confidently give them a second life. Our simple commitment is to send no clothes to landfill, ensuring any unsold stock is redistributed to our charity partners.” John Lewis said: “We offer recycling points in all our shops, provide care/repair information on clothing and provide rental options for customers to prolong the lifespan of garments.”
New Look said: “We have partnered with organisations to give pre-loved… clothes a second life. We sell and distribute [leftover stock] to trusted providers. In 2019 we banned partners sending products to Africa to minimise the possibility of our product ending up at landfill sites like this.”
Solomon Noi, director of waste management for Accra Metropolitan Assembly, said: “It’s growing in the sea – turtles can’t come to the beach to lay eggs, the coral is dying, the fishers can’t fish.”
The textiles made for fast-fashion retailers almost all come from China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Asian countries. On average, clothing is worn seven times in the UK before it is binned or donated, but increasingly items are worn just once.
Garments are sorted for eastern European countries and Africa, after being packed into bales and loaded into shipping containers
Bales are shipped to the recipient country via an importer, then on to retailers to sell at shops or markets. The waste may be distributed for use as rags or cloths, but is often burnt or dumped at landfill or other unofficial sites.