“Fashion Cemetery” .. Environmental disaster in Ghana due to poor British clothing

Shocking footage from the BBC has revealed one of Ghana’s mountain ‘fashion cemeteries’, made up of poor quality second-hand clothes from around the world, donated to charity or put into clothes recycling banks with the belief that they will be sold to raise money for good causes..

Environmental disaster in Ghana due to poor British clothing

But according to experts, the love affair between the people of the UK and “fast fashion” creates a huge surplus of poor quality clothing that is sent abroad by merchants, and in some cases, ends up polluting the poorer countries of the world.

used clothes

Reporting for the BBC in Africa, journalist Thomas Nadi visited one of the surplus landfills in Ghana, where about 40 per cent of second-hand clothes end up. “I was surrounded by undulating mounds of rotting clothes that had formed over years of dumping Western waste and plastics to create this ecological nightmare,” he says.

poor second hand clothes

Ghana is the main beneficiary of second-hand clothing in the UK, taking in 15 million items of second-hand clothing every week. And fast fashion has become poorly made, which poses an environmental crisis in Ghana.

Outfitters

A trader in Ghana’s Kantamanto market explained, “The goods that come are no longer of a standard and our loved ones go days without ever getting good clothes.”

Clothes everywhere

Poorly made clothes arrive damaged or cracked and cannot be resold, which has forced some market merchandisers to close due to a shortage of high-quality items. than it was 15 years ago, the situation will only get worse.

The report notes that the chain of contamination begins even once clothes reach a landfill, with things washed ashore and into the sea.

“Some of these garments are polyester and synthetic fabrics,” explained Roberta Annan, the UN Goodwill Ambassador. Once washed in the waterway, they harm fish and marine life.

Hills of shoddy clothes

It is noteworthy that the fashion industry loses $ 500 billion annually due to fashion waste, which requires that all production and manufacturing companies be forced to adhere to a safe way to dispose of their waste.

According to WRAP , a British charity founded in 2000 to promote sustainable waste management, 70 per cent of all used clothing in the UK is sent abroad, contributing to the worldwide used goods trade where billions of vintage items are bought and sold around the world each year.

Environmental disaster in Ghana due to poor British clothing

United Nations data indicates that the UK is the world’s second largest exporter of used clothing. In 2018, £419 million worth was sold overseas, second only to the United States – which has a much larger population – whose exports totaled £521 million..