Shipping containers carrying 15 million pieces of clothing arrive in Ghana’s largest port each week
Editor’s Note: Fashion is booming. Each year, 100 billion garments are produced by the $108 billion fashion industry. What you don’t see in glossy ads or at fashion week is what happens to the 92 million tons of textile waste produced each year. An astonishing 60% of garments end up in landfills. Much of that waste ends up in Africa. The industry also accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions and is responsible for about 20% of global water waste. Producing a single cotton shirt requires about 2,700 liters of water. Sam Quashi-Idun of Greenpeace Ghana reports on the stunning impact of fashion refuse on his country and its environment.
Behind its booming cocoa industry, vibrant culture, and delicious food, my country, Ghana, has been dealing with a silent plague for several years — in the form of secondhand clothes. Each year, more than 100,000 tons of used clothes, especially fast fashion, exported from the West arrive in our ports. Why do I call it a plague? Because this huge volume of discards is choking our waterways and toxifying our land.
For those reading this and living in the West, have you ever considered what actually happens to your clothing when you donate it? And do you assume donations end up in your home town or city? Well, to answer that question — a lot of it comes to cities in Africa like Accra, flooding our flea markets before choking our rivers and lagoons, polluting our beaches, and destroying marine life in our ocean — places it really shouldn’t be.
“Dead white man’s clothes”
Second-hand clothes have long been important to Ghana’s local economy. Kantamanto market in Accra, established in the 1970s, is one of the largest second-hand markets in the world, with over 30,000 workers who sell, clean, repair, and upcycle the Global North’s textile waste. However, the growth of fast fashion since the 2000’s has led to increasing quantities of poorer quality clothing, and overproduced fast fashion has arrived in overwhelming volumes. Ghana now receives an annual total of about 152,600 tons of second-hand clothes, known as Oburoni Wawu, literally translated as “dead white man’s clothes.” Every week, around 100 forty-foot containers, filled with over 15 million fashion items, arrive in Tema, Ghana’s largest port, east of Accra. About 70% of these clothes are sent to the Kantamanto market.
In October 2023, Greenpeace Africa and I joined forces with our colleagues at Greenpeace Germany on a research trip to document the situation in Ghana. Our aim was simple — to find out from local communities how this impacts their lives, how they feel about the vast quantities of used clothes being imported and to intervene by bringing just a small proportion of these clothes back to Europe — where they belong.
The growth of fast fashion since the 2000’s has led to increasing quantities of poorer quality clothing, and overproduced fast fashion has arrived in overwhelming volumes.
Our journey began in Old Fadama, Accra’s biggest informal settlement, with over 80,000 inhabitants and home to a large and growing dump site. The mountains of clothes were huge, and the smell was potent. Climbing to the top of them felt like standing on the monuments of our overconsumption — a harsh reminder of the fashion industry’s contribution to climate colonialism.
Back at Kantamanto market, we asked local traders to collect all the second-hand clothes, locally called “Borla,” that couldn’t be sold — because they were of poor quality, not suitable for the climate (especially those made with plastic), the sizes weren’t appropriate for the local market, or simply because people in Ghana don’t wear those styles — and arranged for them to be transported to our shipping container.
This was no easy task, and going up and down the narrow sidewalks of this bustling market was eye-opening. Because we didn’t want the clothes to go moldy on the journey, we avoided all those that had been thrown on the ground and used to mop up dirt and water. We collected enough clothes to fill our 20-foot shipping container in just one week.
We spoke to the market women and men who paid the equivalent of $280 for a bag of these imported second-hand clothes and witnessed the disappointment on their faces when they showed us that only half of those clothes were usable. Yet again, a stark reminder of the deception surrounding this flawed, audacious, and toxic trading system.
Once we built trust with local workers at Kantamanto market and they understood the purpose of our mission, there was a huge sense of solidarity and belief in the work we set out to do. They helped us raise awareness across the market to collect the “borla” and put them into the container. It was a laborious but beautiful team effort, full of camaraderie. Some said they felt empowered and hoped this would encourage Western countries to respect our standards and environment.
A new wave of fashion repatriation
This part of the trip was monumental because used clothes sent to Ghana don’t usually make the return trip. Local officials raised eyebrows, and navigating the complicated customs procedures to get our container out of Ghana and onto a ship headed for Europe took a long time. We had similar issues once it arrived in Germany — ironic considering how easily used clothes move towards Global South countries. Finally, in early January, we could start our investigation of the clothes — assessing the types of garments, the materials they are composed of, the brands that made them, and what makes them unwearable.
We counted around 19,000 items of clothing weighing 4.6 tons. Our infrared analysis shocked us to find that the majority of the garments are made with synthetic fibers, which is massively increasing plastic waste in countries in the Global South like Ghana.
We need regulation to outlaw this destructive fast fashion business model.
Then, to coincide with Berlin Fashion Week, activists from Greenpeace Germany placed the container at the Brandenburg Gate, creating a 3.5-meter high and 12-meter wide mountain of textile waste. The demand — for the fashion industry and governments who should be regulating this mess to take responsibility for the dangerous problem they have created finally.
Africa is not your dumpster
The burden of pollution from the West’s obsession with fast fashion should not be falling on the people of Ghana or any other Global South country. This second-hand and toxic waste is being sent without consideration for what people in Ghana need or want and to a place without the appropriate local infrastructure to cope with “your problem” — imposing waste colonialism and creating the conditions for yet more neocolonialism from the Global North.
The impact of fast fashion on Ghana is just one aspect. Big brands are also squandering the efforts and the resources used to make fast fashion, with most of the pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and exploitation in supply chains taking place in other countries in the Global South. We need regulation to outlaw this destructive fast fashion business model. Greenpeace is calling on governments, the EU, and the UN/UNEA to advocate for effective extended producer responsibility, to make companies take responsibility for their products, and to ensure that “polluters pay” for this damage. [And we can all fight back against the normalization of fast fashion by repairing, reusing, sharing, recreating, and choosing better quality clothes. Above all, stop buying fast fashion made with plastic and challenge greenwashing generated by big brands.
Ghana was once declared home to the world’s largest electronic waste dump, due to the tons of e-waste being dumped into the country. But many are not aware of the further burdens that wealthy countries, especially in Europe and North America, continue to place on us.
It’s time to bring an end to this daily disaster happening right before our eyes in Ghana — where clothes have overflowed from the informal waste dumps and streets onto our beaches and into the ocean. It’s time to shake things up, promote and embrace local fashion and designers as an alternative, redefine collective action, and call out this waste colonialism that fails to value and respect the lives of Africans and our environment.
Featured photo source: Greenpeace
