The environmental disaster fuelled by used clothes and fast fashion | Foreign Correspondent
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Published 2021-08-12
to charities, end up in rotting textile mountains in West Africa. This is a story
about how our waste is creating an environmental disaster.
Have you ever thought about what happens to your old clothes after you drop them off at the
op shop? It might be time to start, because these goodwill gestures are helping to fuel an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.
When charities in Australia can’t sell donated clothing, tonnes of it ends up being exported to
countries like Ghana, in West Africa. Ship after ship docks every week with bales from Europe,
the US, China and Australia.
They call them ‘Dead White Man’s Clothes’. Once they arrive in Ghana, they’re taken to the
bustling Kantamanto markets in the capital Accra and from here, they make their way to
villages and towns across the country.
The industry provides jobs for thousands of people, like Asare Asamoah, a successful importer.
He brings in clothes, mainly from the United Kingdom, and if they’re good quality, he can make
a decent living.
But it’s risky business. He has to pay upfront for a bale and never knows whether it’s trash or
treasure. With cheap, fast fashion flooding the world, the quality of the clothes arriving in
Ghana is getting worse and worse.
‘Sometimes you’ve gone and bought something, then you don’t get what you want’, says
Asamoah. ‘Then you lose your money.”
And there’s a dark side to this industry.
Correspondent Linton Besser travels to Ghana to uncover the dirty secret behind the world’s
fashion addiction.
While 60 per cent of imported fashion items are reused and resold, 40 per cent are rubbish,
creating an environmental catastrophe for this poor nation.
With the main dumpsite for textile waste now full, unregulated dumpsites ring the city. These
fetid clothes mountains are often set on fire, filling the skies with acrid smoke.
‘It is totally a disservice to us in this part of the world because we have become sort of the
dumping ground for the textile waste that is produced from Europe, from the Americas”, says
Accra’s waste manager, Solomon Noi.
Emmanuel Ajaab imports used clothes from Australia but he despairs at the poor quality of the
clothes that arrive. From a bale of about 200 garments, he finds only seven he can resell at a
good price.
“In Europe and UK and Australia, America, they think Africa here, sorry to say, we are not like a
human being”, he tells Foreign Correspondent.
The dumped textiles also get swept up in the monsoonal rains and end up choking the city’s
waterways and beaches, posing a danger to fishermen and aquatic life. Liz Ricketts, who runs
an NGO campaigning for awareness of Ghana's textile waste crisis, lays the blame at the feet
of international fashion houses.
“Waste is a part of the business model of fashion. A lot of brands overproduce by up to 40 per
cent”, says Ricketts.
Noi begs the people who donate their clothes to think twice about where they end up.
“If they come here, like you've come, and you see the practicality for yourself, then they will
know that, no, we better take care of these things within our country and not to ship that
problem to cause problems to other people.”
About Foreign Correspondent:
Foreign Correspondent is the prime-time international public affairs program on Australia's national broadcaster, ABC-TV. We produce half-hour duration in-depth reports for broadcast across the ABC's television channels and digital platforms. Since 1992, our teams have journeyed to more than 170 countries to report on war, natural calamity and social and political upheaval – through the eyes of the people at the heart of it all.
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All Comments (21)
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One thing I’ve learned from this pandemic is that, I don’t need as much clothes as I have.
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I don’t support fast fashion. I’d rather buy something that is good quality and I will keep it for several years. We all need to do our part.
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Sad. I work at a thrift store and I'm disgusted at the amount of stuff people buy and throw away. Equally frustrating is the crap that does get donated, dirty, stained, ripped, smelly clothes, ripped up moldy books, boxes covered in rat and cockroach shit, other items broken and unusable to anybody, etc, and we basically end up throwing there trash away for them. We will even give what we can away for free, but the amount of trash, ugh. I can't stand this fast cheap fashion and low quality clothes that's everywhere now, quality so bad that after a first use and wash is no good anymore. Then what we sell for very cheap everyone wants it for cheaper, it's disgusting, and I would say at the very least half if not more of the customer are reselling it. I don't have a problem with resellers but many want it for cheap or free and are super pushy. I bust my ass all day long and it's not worth it dealing with customers and donations of trash.
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Failed to mention who is sending those clothes to Africa. Tax exempt charities. The same charities that we here in Australia are led to believe that our donations go towards helping impoverished people here at home. Noone in Australia donates used materials believing it will end up in Africa. We are being misled.
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I'm still wearing things from when I was 15 and 16 years old... I'm almost 29. I will wear it until it has holes and then I will sew those holes. I grew up in a town of extreme poverty, and I was taught the values of using what you had. I met many snotty kids who made fun of me in school. I usually stay to myself even to this day. Fast fashion makes no sense to me. I get most everything from thrift stores and I wear it until there's no thread left. If I've gotten a brand new article of clothing, it will last me the rest of my life. Everything I have is precious to me.
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In my building we have a window on the ground floor, where people leave stuff (sometimes food, too) they do not need/want, so anyone can take it. I prefer to leave clothes I would donate there (second hand shops are ridiculously expensive where I live, and the clothes are just...bad). If no one takes it, I take it back (but someone always takes it). I also try not to buy unnecessary stuff. You can ask people in your community if they want it - friends, family, or give it away through some site.
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I am from Eritrea 🇪🇷 east africa. Despite the dictatorship regime with very limit human right in the country, & with very low 2 billion USD DGP in comparing Ghana's DGP 76 billion USD. Eritrea is one of the poorest country, but also one of the cleanest country in the world. The 1000 km eritrean red sea is one of the cleanest sea in the world. You may ask How this can be possible? There are rules. Plastic bags & packages are banned. If you go to shopping you have to have any permanent bag to use or you have to buy from the shop paper bag. And the people are helpful they're clean, they dont littered. Second the gov. Doesn't allowed importation which can damaging the environment, even cars are not allowed to import older than 8 years. the country is also not accepting any aid from foreign countries including Europe and USA.
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Best line I've ever heard: Better to fix the problem within the country rather than ship the problems somewhere else.
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It's more profitable for charity shops to sell these clothes to poorer countries than to pay for waste disposal here. They're a scandal and a scam - which truly is a shame, because they started out actually doing something positive for people.
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I heard about this probably like 20 years ago, the only things I'll buy brand new are socks and underwear. Everything else is second hand because I don't mind it and it does help my wallet and our mom, this planet that provides us with everything we NEED in order to live...
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I'm shook! This is so awful on so many levels! It's sad that at the same time that these imported clothes have been providing income for so many in Ghana, the whole process is an environmental disaster everywhere along the way, - from the terrible pollution of waterways, and people in the fast fashion industry, (all the chemicals they are exposed to and horrific working conditions, in countries like Bangladesh, which sadly completely depend on the industry), to the shipping of these clothes all over the world, to then be sold to us, then discarded, even when we think we are doing good donating them to charities, that then ship them to Africa (and Chile), for all this horrific dystopian reality as we have seen in the documentary just now. SO MUCH WASTE!! All the contamination generated by the shipping, then the discarding, hours away by truck, the sea filled with the clothes, the suffering aquatic life and all it's associated problems, the beaches ruined, the landfill, the burning of the clothes, -which can do no good for the people there breathing in not only the smoke but all those acrid chemicals. And the whole place just looks scummy and awful for those people to have to live in. And then after all that, the waste is increasing and the people are suffering more, as now they are not even making money in many cases, like the lady with her baby and the importer who got the bale from Australia. This is so disgusting! How as a human race have we not addressed these problems??! It's shameful. There must be some industry that can use all the waste clothes for something useful, insulation, tiles, Other clothes, I don't know. Maybe there are several. But there must be something, so that all the waste clothes could be used in a healthy way, no longer in landfill and still creating jobs and money for these people.
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Yikes! I'm over here refusing to do squats and lunges cuz my left knee hurts. But there's a woman here, carrying he baby, and balancing like 50 pounds of clothing on he head and walking casually. TF is wrong with me.
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I wear clothes til it falls apart. Anything like T shirt, flannel, etc gets cut up and used for cleaning rags.
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When I first learnt about this, I never donated my clothes again. Instead I took up sewing, so whatever peices I don't want to wear anymore I tear up and make new items I do like.
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No one forced these people to import these clothes, they could always manufacture their own. There is a thousand ways to reuse the clothes not fit for wearing. Wash them, cut them up and create carpets, curtains, sleeping mats, bags, hats, insulation materials, nappies etc to name a few. Furthermore, we need only a few outfits and not hundreds.
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Quite enlightening documentary. Thank you for producing this. The fashion industry contributes so much to environmental decline. They overproduce by 40%? That's ridiculous. When I was growing up in the United States in the 1980's, the biggest social faux pas was to wear the same clothes twice within a week. Some aimed to not wear the same clothes twice, ever. I hope subsequent generations are changing to realize how much of a waste that is. I personally wear my clothes until they're ripped. I then donate to charity. If anything, I hope the cloth from my attire can be repurposed as blankets, curtains or other materials.
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"Recycling" is mostly a big fat lie.
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Can we all agree that the traditional clothing is far more beautiful and well made.
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In 2023 I will sincerely make an effort to buy less in general , and make what I do buy more deliberate. Watching these types of videos is extremely eye opening for me, and definitely make me reflect on what’s really important.
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God forgive me not being grateful for everything I have to see people going thru this fighting over used clothing just breaks my heart.
