Across West Africa, the arrival of summertime rains marks a moment of rebirth; dust that accumulated over the dry season is washed clean by fresh showers, and compact soils are loosened for the next cycle of diverse crops. However, at Accra’s Kantamanto market, where busy traffic creeps beside the expanse of second-hand clothing sellers, the arrival of heavy rains marks the reinforcement of Ghana’s position as a waste disposal sink for the world’s worn and unsellable textiles to soak into the ground, out of view of their original consumers in the Global North.

As rain falls, sellers make haste through market corridors, seeking shelter under sheets of plastic and overlapping umbrellas. With each step a matted textile floor is compressed. The remnants of a pair of elastic jeans settle beneath the table of one tailor, the synthetic fur hood of an unrecognisable winter coat is washed out of the market’s centre through a shallow canal, resting eventually beneath the hooves of standing cattle. Meanwhile the heavy flow of water from the adjacent lagoon guides a lone rubber shoe to the beach at Jamestown where it rests lodged amidst the entangled tentacles of over $100 million worth of worn textiles.

This is the fate of billions of tons of clothing items every year, costing Ghana nearly $250 million in waste management costs, not to mention the unquantifiable health and environmental costs absorbed by the citizens of Accra.

The Or Foundation’s #StopWasteColonialism campaign reports that “this waste impacts communities financially, increases the risk of asthma, cholera, malaria and other diseases, changes the relationship that people have with the ecosystem around them, and ultimately this waste is used to displace people, blaming communities closest to the disposal sites for the waste.”

Globally, the expansion of the second-hand clothing industry has been heralded as a sustainable solution to the detrimental impacts of mass production in the textile and apparel industry. In theory, these sales have the potential to challenge the clothing industry’s fast,  linear model and reshape consumer norms; instilling values of circularity by prolonging the lifespan of items.

The substantial body of evidence of the industry’s harmful activities, alongside growing consumer awareness surrounding the environmental impacts of apparel production has urged the articulation of new industry regulations to curb fast fashion pollution. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature emphasizes that approximately one third (34.8%) of primary microplastics in oceans are from the laundry of synthetic textiles. A life cycle analysis of the global release of microplastics illustrates that the vast majority of these materials are released into the environment at the household level, making a strong argument for a rethinking of what consumers do with textile items after they purchase them in the market.

While the focus on degrowth-esque circular market activities distracts from the primary culprits of microplastic waste– fast fashion multinational companies– it is crucial to follow the trail of these emerging activities as individuals internalize the burdens of environmental pollution and climate change.

Shopping for second-hand clothing has grown to inhabit a key position in popular culture in the Global North, however the majority of this trade occurs at an international level. The United States is the largest exporter (sender) of second-hand clothing with Pakistan as the largest importer (receiver)– buying $204 million worth of clothing annually. Ghana is a close second– importing nearly $180 million worth of clothes per year or 15 million items per week, 70% of which end up in Kantamanto market.

Across Ghana, the importation of second-hand clothing alongside surplus apparel merchandise makes up a thriving industry, employing approximately 30,000 people in Kantamanto market alone, of which 35% are women.

Previously owned fashion items are imported in bulk, sold in blind bales to local traders, and eventually sold at affordable prices to consumers within the country.

Despite the economic promise of these markets– namely the growing employment opportunities and rapid expansion of rural markets– it is crucial that these development benefits do not obstruct from the growing evidence of the brutal planetary and health hazards associated with the saturation of low-quality clothing, many of which cannot be sold and are beyond repair.

Over the last ten years, shoppers have remarked on the diminishing quality of the bales entering markets on a weekly basis. Sellers regularly make high investments, only to be deceived by the supply once bales opened: finding heavy clothing unfit for sale and unfit for customers to wear in Accra’s humid climate.

Additionally, the market’s division of labour, assigns young women the role of head-transporting bales through the maze-like corridors of the market, a role coined kayeyi. For these kayeyi– many of whom migrate from the country’s northern regions– there is growing concern about irreversible spinal degeneration caused by their daily task. This illustrates the gendered accumulation of health burdens in the pollution crisis, a trend we see consistently across interlinked global climate and biodiversity crises.

Clothing from the transported bales are selected, repaired and prepared for sale in the markets, while tons traverse through as waste. Dense waves of clothing remnants end up in nearby landfills and bodies of water infusing toxic chemicals into daily life.On the fringes of the market, age-old traditions of animal rearing and human nutrition are threatened as the quality of animal products– raised atop soils overturned with solid and organic waste– diminishes. Further afield, landfill leachate– the dissolved chemicals from a combination of organic and synthetic solid waste– are rapidly destroying marine life and the livelihoods of fishermen who must handpick their shrinking daily catch from meters of entangled textiles.

Facing these complex issues, despite not being responsible for the mass demand for production of these apparel commodities in the first place, highlights how the burdens of the pollution crisis are unfairly distributed along racialised and geographic lines.

Furthermore, the systematic displacement of the traditional textile industry has established a dependency on the opportunities presented by the second-hand clothing market despite its environmental and economically unsustainability.

This situation demonstrates how the perceived circularity of the second-hand clothing trade fuels a diminishing self-determination in Africa. At the same time, calling for the abrupt end to the trade would disrupt the livelihoods of tens of thousands of sellers, locked-in to the realities of markets such as Kantamanto.

Statistics about the actual percentage of waste present in imported bales is highly contested. While the Or Foundation, reported a figure as high as 40% to evidence a situation of waste colonialism, a report by the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association (GUCDA) suggests that 5% of clothing in imported bales could be considered waste, asserting that the “prevailing international perception is not only wrong, but economically unsound and deeply patronising.” Furthermore, they remark that the ongoing press narrative has detrimental policy impacts on the gender diverse, sustainable sector which creates livelihood opportunities, supports families and fosters entrepreneurial endeavours.

“Culture and creativity are at the core”

Yayra Agbofah, founder of the community-led advocacy and arts initiative, The Revival, maintains that deceitful trade norms and the unjust distribution of burdens in Ghana is rooted in the countries colonial history wherein “post-independence, it became more acceptable to wear what white people wore, so you had people wanting to wear a suit and tie… the infiltration of obroni wa wu– or ‘dead white man’s clothing’– into Ghanaian fashion culture diluted the essence of local and traditional fashion.”

In Ghana, each language and respective tribe has their own unique fabrics and design elements– from Kenté to Gonja and Agbada. Yayra was struck by this painful history of cultural sidelining, which he believes has justified the second-hand clothing trade for decades and legitimised waste colonialism. His work at The Revival aims to plot a path towards a justice-led circular textiles economy by “going back in time” and sourcing social and environmental solutions from the historical creativity and elements of design found across diverse Ghanaian cultures.

The initiative supports market sellers to carry-out value-adding practices of not only repairing clothing, but also up-cycling and storytelling with items that would otherwise end up as waste. Additionally, acknowledging the sheer saturation of incoming items, they are exploring the potential of repurposing hordes of polyester textile waste into materials fit for public purpose such as fuel and construction materials.

He remarks, “creativity is at the core of what we do: it makes room for innovation and makes room to explore people’s talents, to explore people’s creative thinking… the people here know their stories and know how to tell it, but there needs to be room for creativity and the knowledge that you can practice self-determination and do whatever it is you want, to take your narrative further.”

Bearing witness

Bearing witness to Ghana’s garment crisis means recognising the role that consumers and regulatory agencies have played across geographic and timescales. The diverging international and national views on the impact of the second-hand clothing trade illustrates the complexity of readings on Ghana’s socio-political past, environmental present and economic future. These differences outline the need for a reconciliation of approaches that may secure livelihoods while uplifting local people’s claims to a healthy environment.

The work of Ghanaian community-led initiatives reminds us of the power of witness in creativity. As second-hand clothing markets have become ubiquitous across the African continent, they stand as a symbol of creative resilience, a space where participants are enabled to claim their culture, community and sustainable local economies with the materials and stories at their disposal. Grassroots solutions rooted in creative adaptation and storytelling could tackle the planetary crisis at multiple scales simultaneously, and plot a path forward towards a socially and environmentally just future.

Photographer and Filmmaker Natalija Gormalova collaborates with The Revival to document and amplify the experiences of the Kayeyi and entrepreneurs in Accra’s second-hand markets.