Fast fashion in accra, ghana
Our fashion choices change the lives of people beyond ourselves. Accra, Ghana is a prime example of this. Ghana, a country located on the west African coast, is the home to an estimated 35 million people. Its capital city, Ghana, houses around 2.8 million residents and remains the largest metropolitan area in the country. Accra’s beautiful coastal plains and significant bodies of water are becoming ever more hindered by the global fashion industry.
According to Time, $214 million worth of used clothing was imported into Ghana in 2021. Accra is one of the largest secondhand clothing importers in the world and home to Kantamanto, a huge clothing markets. Here, donated items from the UK and the United States are sometimes sold by local vendors but oftentimes end up as waste. Western secondhand shops sell about 20% of their donated clothes, according to The Guardian, and the rest are packaged, sold, and exported to Ghana. Vendors pay around $200 for a bale, although they do not know the contents. “Today’s bale was very, very costly,” market vendor Jacklyn Ofori Benson tells The Guardian that. “Most of the 230 items were rubbish; I noticed so many bloodstains. I’m really angry and have thrown all of them away.” As fast fashion proliferates and the number of clothes being produced, consumed, and discarded has increased, there are more clothes in circulation, many of which are not of the quality to live through a secondhand life. Vendors can only sell about 60% of what they receive, leaving 100 tons per day of clothing waste to pollute the city. Although the city cleans up about 30% of the waste, most of it flows into landmark bodies of ocean such as the Korle Lagoon and the Odaw river. Wildlife and humans alike are endangered by the mounds of textile waste cluttering ocean waters and sandy shores.
There are people taking action, however, to combat the fashion industry’s strong force. President John Mahama of Ghana says that he is constructing a recycling plant to process the waste safely and prevent it from accumulating in landfills. Locals are making waves as well. The Revival, a nonprofit founded by local Yatra Agbofah, is working to stop clothing from piling in landfills by repairing any blemishes in the clothing and recycling them into other textile items.
Despite the positive change, it is important that each actor in the fast fashion industry makes decisions that consider global impact.
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