(Observer Network News) On the beach near Accra, the capital of Ghana, the West African country, old clothes soaked in water piled up, and the scene was shocking.
According to the British "Daily Mail" reported on November 4, clothing retail giants such as H&M and Zara are the main garbage producers, H&M produces 3 billion pieces of clothing every year, of which only about 10% are recycled and the rest are shipped to places like Accra.
Bloomberg reported on November 2 that it was a disaster that lasted for decades, with the fashion industry producing more than 100 billion garments a year, many of which are thrown into so-called recycling bins and shipped to second-hand clothing importers such as Ghana. As a result, 40% of used clothes cannot be recycled and become rotting garbage on Ghana's seashores.
According to Bloomberg, Ghana is "one of the largest importers of used clothes" in the world, where piles of second-hand clothes shipped in are called "dead white people's clothes."
On Chorkor Beach near Accra, layers of "rich country debris" form a 6-foot (about 1.8 meters) high wall: inside are hole shoes, blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt, red Victoria's Secret underwear...
Solomon Noi, head of waste management at the city of Accra, said that when it rained, the discarded clothes flowed into the sea along the city's waterways and drains, and then the waves slapped most of the trash back to shore.
Neu and his sanitation colleagues are fighting a doomed battle every day as they try to centralize Accra's textile waste to landfill, a landfill that was supposed to last 25 years in just 3 years.
The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published in 2021 that more than 15 million second-hand clothing items enter the second-hand clothing trade market in Accra, Ghana every week from the United Kingdom, EU countries, North America and Australia.
Noy estimates that 40 per cent of used clothes shipped to the port of Accra are not recycled and end up just turning into garbage, and "the Ghanaian government does not have the funds and facilities to deal with white people's waste".
But Noi said a simple ban on imports was not enough because the trade supported the livelihoods of many people in the area.
Bloomberg called it a disaster that lasted for decades as clothing became cheaper, produced in more and more volume, and more disposable. The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion garments a year, equivalent to about 14 pieces per person on the planet, more than double the number in 2000.
Tens of millions of pieces of clothing are discarded every day, many of which are thrown into so-called recycling bins. Other obsolete used clothes enter the global second-hand supply chain and are planned to be converted into cleaning cloths, mattress fillers or insulation.
However, the rise of the fast fashion industry and consumers' preference for quantity over quality has led to an oversupply of cheap clothing, which has harmed the economic benefits of the second-hand clothing trade and placed a great burden on developing countries.
While global apparel retail giants including Swedish brand H&M, Spanish brand Zara and Mango, and Irish brand Primark have launched second-hand clothing recycling programs and thanked customers who came to deliver used clothes as a token of appreciation, very few clothes are actually recycled.
According to statistics from the British non-profit organization Alan MacArthur Foundation, due to the limitations of technology and equipment, less than 1% of the clothes recycled by these fashion companies in stores will be used in the production of new clothes, and most of them enter the global second-hand supply chain together with used clothes bins on the street, online recycling platforms and other channels of discarded clothes, and are shipped to Ghana, India and other countries.
The British "Daily Mail" also paid attention to this problem, and its website published an article on November 4 saying that H&M and Zara are the main problem makers in the industry. H&M produces 3 billion pieces of clothing a year, of which only about 10 percent are recycled, with the rest destined for places like Accra, Ghana, piled up in its waterways.
Screenshot of the Daily Mail report
In 2015, East African Community member states proposed banning the import of second-hand clothing, planning to phase out the second-hand clothing trade by 2019, and increasing tariffs on imported second-hand clothing from 2017 to protect the local textile industry.
This decision immediately drew opposition from the United States. In March 2017, the United States threatened to remove Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Under pressure, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda cancelled their decision to impose tariffs. Rwanda did not compromise, so in 2018 the United States decided to suspend Rwanda's duty-free exports to the United States.
The U.S. objected on the grounds that if they couldn't export second-hand clothing, the U.S. would lose at least 40,000 jobs and 150,000 nonprofit jobs would be "negatively impacted."
According to the Daily Mail, the United States may be more worried about fast fashion companies leaving the United States because they cannot ship obsolete clothes to developing countries. Over the past five years, the U.S. used clothing industry has been worth $662 million annually.
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