“The Accra of my youth is gone”: Second-hand clothing choking Ghana’s capital
- Emma Hizette & Jacques Malherbe
- Mar 14
- 8 min read
The waves lap the shore of Jamestown beach, a once pristine stretch of coastline in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Sea turtles once hatched along in its dunes, fisherman put out to sea in balsa-wood boats but today the surf is filled with the bright colors of what locals call “Obroni wawu”. Dead white man’s clothes. Textiles sent to Ghana from the factories of Asia, via the wardrobes of the West. For Jacob Ayesu, an Accra-born lab technician who studies Ghana’s beaches, the clothes have made his home unrecognizable in one generation. “Fishermen are catching textiles instead of fish and sea turtles are going extinct because they can’t lay eggs,” he says, “The Accra of my youth is gone.”
The hidden cost of second-hand clothing
Clothing and textile collection bins are dotted around European towns and cities. Most citizens are no more than a five minute walk away from an apparently convenient and sustainable solution to the problem of excess clothing. “Many people have this perception of: ‘I did a good thing by putting my used clothes in this bin’”, says Maria Pilar Uribe, a PhD researcher at the University of Groningen who specialises in textile waste, “‘someone who needs the clothes gets them’, but in reality most of it just gets dumped.” Ghana, along with many African and Latin American countries, lies at the end of this global supply chain for second-hand clothes. The last stop on a multi-country odyssey that might take a t-shirt from a collection bin in Groningen through three continents to Ghana’s markets, beaches, and landfills.
Countries in Western Europe, with high labour costs, are generally the origin point for collected textiles. What follows is a first sorting process, with items being screened for quality and condition. The highest quality textiles, referred to in the trade as the “crème”, make up about 5% of the average load. These pieces find their way into vintage stores in Western Europe. What is left will be further exported through Eastern Europe and South-East Asia, before finally finding its way to African markets and landfills. “A small fraction of the highest quality stays within Europe, the Netherlands for instance, while lower-quality textiles are distributed across the world,” says a representative of Regain Recyclables BV, a Dutch textile company specialising in the collection and initial sorting of used clothing. Their process begins with pre-sorting, where they remove any non-textile items before supplying the materials to fine-sorting companies. “The textile collection we do really is a craft,” they explain. “During the fine sorting, we determine where each item can be sent for reuse across the world. If we didn’t do this properly, there would be no market for it, and we wouldn’t exist.” They sort textiles into 150 to 250 different categories. This classification helps determine whether items are suitable for direct reuse or whether they should be recycled. The majority of collected textiles are reused, a portion is recycled, and only a small fraction is ultimately incinerated in Europe. Interestingly, they mentioned that there are unlicensed operators placing collection bins illegally. “There are some cowboys in the industry who don’t comply with the same regulations as we do,” Regain Recyclables BV notes, “They give us a bad name.”
From donation to dumping
However, the problem of unlicensed operators seems to be a symptom of the opaque world of textile recycling, rather than an exclusive cause of its problems, a fact noted by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in a 2023 report into the industry. “It’s nearly impossible for any actor in this reverse supply chain to accurately claim that they’re entirely disconnected from textile exports’ adverse impacts,” the report states. One reason for this is the sheer scale of the industry. Despite its small size, the Netherlands is one of the world’s top 10 exporters of used clothing, with a market totaling almost €200 million. Over 80% of all clothes collected in the Netherlands are exported out of the country, a fact confirmed by the recycling companies we spoke to. The first destination for clothes from the Netherlands is often Poland, who received over 14 thousand tonnes of used textile in 2022. Here another round of sorting takes place with recyclable and sellable items removed for the local market before the clothes are again bundled and sold by the tonne to countries in South-East Asia.
Once textiles leave the European Union, the job of tracking them becomes even more difficult. Often ships leave from Polish ports bound for Karachi, Pakistan, a global hub in the textile trade. Here, an even more labour intensive sorting takes place with men, women, and sometimes children being put to work pairing up single shoes and sorting through mountains of clothes until the right size and model is found. Pakistan, though, is rarely the end location for most textiles. The export market in the country is worth more than €100 million, with all of its top export destinations being in Africa. Key among these locations is Ghana, the world’s largest receiver of used textiles in 2022. In Ghana’s capital, Accra, clothes often means one thing: Kantamanto Market. By some estimates, the sprawling market is the world’s biggest second hand clothing market with over 6 million garments circulating between its 500 open air stalls. Here, the “Dead White Man’s Clothes” provide an economic opportunity to thousands of the city’s residents. “The beautiful thing about people selling, repairing, and upcycling is that they learn a skill which can be a source of income,” says Frank Nabi-Yankey, a remanufacturing specialist working in the market.
However, the opportunity the market provides is offset by the larger damage textile waste does to the city. Clothes often arrive to market traders in an unusable condition or else, there are simply too many even for Kantamanto. In a city without a specialist textile recycling facility, this means one thing: Dumping. Clothes are disposed of in the Korle Lagoon, which runs past the market, or else they are burnt on an unlicensed landfill in the Old Fadama neighbourhood of Accra. “Burning. It’s the easiest way,” says Pilar Uribe “I don’t agree with the solution but I understand why. Because there is no other solution.” For the city’s residents, this means a myriad of health problems from the plumes of plastic smoke filling their lungs and the tonnes of microplastic seeping into their water. “It’s very disturbing to see the impact of textile waste in Accra,” says Nabi-Yankey, “I feel helpless and it’s disheartening to see how the clothing industry turns a blind eye to this issue.”
For Dutch textile companies, the problem of waste choking Ghana’s beaches is not of their making. Frank Someling, who works at the recycling company Xycles Textile BV, pushes back against the perception that usable textiles are simply discarded in end-of-life countries. “There’s a strong focus on the idea that rich Western countries are dumping waste in places like Chile, Africa, and now even Romania. But in my view, the reality is different.” He emphasizes that the situation is more complex and warns against oversimplified narratives: “Don’t go along with the propaganda that the rich West just dumps everything in other countries.” A major contributor to the rise in textile waste is the rapid growth of ultra-fast fashion, driven by Chinese companies such as Shein and Temu. “We’re seeing a significant decline in the quality of textile waste,” says Regain Recyclables BV, “Many poor-quality garments come from online retailers like Temu and Shein, which flood the market with cheap clothing. It’s a big problem.”
Pilar Uribe is in agreement about the impact of ultra fast fashion: “In the past decade, the quality of garments and textiles has declined significantly. [Collection bins and charities] receive waste, as many of these clothes are too poor in quality to be resold,” she says, “In the end, the real issue is overproduction—there are already more than enough clothes on this planet.”
For textiles, the problem is being compounded by a sharp rise in the consumption of clothes all over the world. In the Netherlands, clothing purchases have increased by 60% in the past 10 years, with items being kept for half as long on average. “It’s confusing,” says Frank Nabi-Yankey, “I can’t comprehend why the textile industry will still overproduce with the extent of textile dumping in Accra.”
Ultimately, the price for this convenience is paid by traders in Kantamanto. On average, 40% of every bale of secondhand clothing bought by market traders is not suitable for resale. While some of these clothes do come from newly industrialised Asian countries, the vast majority still originate from the West. Even usable textiles are sometimes dumped because of the sheer quantity of items being received every week. “I always ask myself, ‘Do we really need this volume of textiles arriving in Ghana every week?’” says Nabi-Yankey, reflecting on the impact of the clothing industry.
Waste colonialism
Ghana finding itself as the end of the line for the world’s trash is not a problem exclusive to textiles. The same blueprint for trash migrating from the Global North to the Global South can be found in electronics, plastics, metals, and any other industry in which money can be made and saved in shipping trash away. Indeed, many of the clothing fires started in Accra are in the service of waste pickers specialising in electronic e-waste. “People use the clothes to burn wires and melt rubber to get the copper inside,” says Jacob Ayesu. “Waste colonialism”, as the phenomenon has come to be known, is often not a legal issue but rather a political one. “As countries, we cannot manage the waste we produce every year,” says Maria Pilar Uribe, “so the easiest thing to do is to send this waste to another country. So it will be a problem for them and not for us.”
While the problem remains hidden from the view of consumers, solely the concern of companies tasked with removing our trash in an efficient and profitable way, Maria Pilar Uribe sees little prospect of change. “We live in this world where companies want to earn money,” she says. “They sell this idea that they want to be better for the planet but at the end of the day their main goal is profit.”
Instead, she advocates for individuals to take more responsibility in holding themselves and their governments to account. “If you are buying something today, extend the life of this garment for as long as you can, but this is a political issue,” she says, “You have to vote. You have to go and say, ‘I want this person in charge of the sustainability department in my government.’”
Although an old t-shirt may cease to exist in the mind of a consumer once it has been dropped off into a charitable recycling bin, ready to begin a new life in service of a good cause, the reality is very different. Instead, that t-shirt may become a part of a complex and opaque global supply chain, confined to warehouses, shipping containers, and markets until, ultimately, washing up on a Ghanaian beach. Anything but invisible.
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