Serious findings that link clothing waste with air-bound and waterways microfibre pollution levels up to 20 and 45 times respectively higher than in other major urban centres globally have been uncovered in Accra, Ghana, report claims.
Why is this so important? Accra’s Kantamanto Market is the world’s largest secondhand textile centre where roughly 15 million globally-sourced secondhand garments pass through each week. And among the tons of discarded garments were tagged clothing from a host of major fashion and sports brands.
The first-of-its kind citizen science research “establishes a clear link between the fast fashion business model, environmental disruption and risks to public health,” with the report’s authors calling on “fashion brands and policymakers to be globally accountable.”
The findings claim to “establish a measurable link between garments at the end of the textile value chain and ecological pollution measured at both microscopic and whole garment scale… highlighting the environmental and likely health consequences of the fast fashion business model characterised by overproduction and overconsumption exceeding planetary boundaries.”
We’re told searches regularly uncover tangled masses of discarded garments along Accra’s coastline included brand tags from some of the world’s best-known fashion and sport labels, found both in the waste stream of Kantamanto Market and on the city’s beaches.
These are tracked and documented frequently as part of The Or Foundation’s series, Tag Ur It, the report noted.
There’s no denying that all of these brands have been investing heavily in making their supply chains more eco-friendly and in using less-polluting materials. But a big problem comes when the consumers who’ve bought such brands’ products no longer want them and think they’re doing the right thing by recycling them in some way. The fact is that many people who put their used clothes in a bag they can leave on their doorstep to be recycled or who take them to a recycling centre have little idea what happens to them next and where they end up.
Many such products end up in Africa.
The study, by Accra-based NGO The Or Foundation and the Deheyn Lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego was published in the journal Environmental Advances. It identified up to 1,620 synthetic microfibres per litre of water and up to 24 synthetic microfibres per cubic metre of air microfibre levels in water samples around Kantamanto Market. Airborne microfibres were 20x more than Shanghai, 45x more than Paris.
The study “indicates that microfibers are released into Accra’s environment through the unbaling and merchandising of millions of garments at Kantamanto Market on a weekly basis as well as through dumpsites near the market. Due to high volumes of garments overrunning insufficient funding for waste management infrastructure, garments are either burned in the open, emitting airborne microfibers, or left in piles that leach waterborne microfibres into the nearby Korle Lagoon and eventually into the sea.”
Ghana is “consistently” among the largest export markets for secondhand clothing, alongside Kenya, receiving 147,000 tons of secondhand clothing in 2023, predominantly from the UK, the EU, China, Canada and the US.
The report claims that “despite prior sorting for reuse in the country of origin, low garment quality and condition means that many items inside bales go unsold and enter the waste stream, leaving local communities to bear the financial and physical burden.”
Lead author Dr Dimitri Deheyn emphasises the importance of citizen science in documenting the impacts of overproduction: “For researchers like myself, citizen scientists are an essential part of the work. As the eyes, the ears and the hands, they carry local expert knowledge that only those from impacted communities can hold. That kind of grounded, everyday commitment to caring for the Earth is central to solving complex global challenges.”
Independent scientist Bright Anokye working with The Or Foundation and a Tide Turners leader describes the scale of the effort: “Every week we carry tons of clothing off of our beach, cleaning up a problem that we didn’t create. There are over 150 of us leading clean up efforts, counting the fibers, the garments, and the brand tags washing up on our shores. We want our beaches to be clean, but we can’t carry this weight alone. It’s time those responsible for this mess step up with support.”
The report argues that emerging regulations, such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs intended to shift the cost of waste management onto producers, have a critical role to play.
Contributing author and co-founder of The Or Foundation, Branson Skinner, calls on fashion brands and policymakers to be globally accountable: “The link between overproduction and waste is indisputable. Now we need funding from Extended Producer Responsibility fees collected in primary markets to flow with garments to their final destinations like Kantamanto Market in Accra in order to support the communities working to transform a linear industry into a circular one and cleaning up the undeniable damage done from decades of a business model that has externalised social and environmental costs.”
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