Ghana Fights Back Against Fast Fashion
You’ve heard about fast food, but what about fast fashion? That’s the term used for clothing that is mass produced very cheaply, usually in Chinese factories, and then purchased in Western countries like the U.S. The clothing is so cheap that Westerners often only wear it for a little while, before donating it or throwing it away. This practice has become even more common now that online shopping has made shopping from home easier. But where does all of this discarded clothing end up? Here, btw takes a closer look at the impacts of fast fashion, as well as its effects on the country of Ghana.
The Fast Fashion Life Cycle
Fashion trends are rapidly changing. It’s also easier than ever to go online to purchase cheap, fashionable clothing that can arrive at our doorstep in days. A problem results when your closet becomes filled with trendy purchases that are viewed as “out of fashion”. What to do? If your answer is to throw your old clothes away or donate them, then you should know where that item ends up, and the larger environmental impact that piece of clothing has.
Often, discarded or donated clothing winds up on the African continent, whose countries often don’t have the infrastructure or resources to deal with this amount of donated material. Secondhand markets quickly become saturated with more items of clothing than can ever be purchased. Much of it is thrown away, where it clogs landfills and waterways.
An estimated 92 million tons of discarded textiles are produced every year, and the United States is the biggest exporter of used clothing in the world. Some African countries have tried to fight back financially. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on imports of secondhand clothing, while last year, the president of Uganda said he would ban them altogether. But so far, nothing has been effective at stopping the delivery of textile waste to these countries.
“Dead White Man’s Clothing” Festival
Ghana is another African nation that faces a huge problem with fast fashion fallout. It is now taking a creative approach to raise awareness about it. Ghana hosts some of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world. An estimated fifty million secondhand clothing items come into Ghana weekly. Of these, about 40 percent leave as waste–meaning that the clothes are in such poor condition that they can’t be resold and must be thrown out. As a result, Ghana’s beaches and lagoons are clogged with discarded clothing (known as “textile waste”), as items are just thrown out to sea to get rid of them.
A nonprofit group called the Or Foundation has come up with an interesting approach to the problem. Every year, the group hosts a festival where models wear “upcycled” clothing pieces by local designers. In other words, fashion designers purchase secondhand clothing items from the huge markets and reuse the pieces in a new way.
The upcycled designs are then displayed by models on a runway in this fun, popular event. Other events at the festival include talent shows, pop-up vendors, live music performances, and local food vendors. The festival is called OWO, short for Obroni Wawu October, which means “dead white man’s clothes” in the local Akan language. The goal of the festival is to raise awareness of the problem, and to encourage people to find creative ways to “upcycle” their own clothing.