Environment: how our old clothes pollute Ghana

The waves of the Atlantic Ocean reject them inexorably on the beaches, where they pile up for hundreds of meters. Thousands of garments worn in the West end up on the sides of Ghana and even in central Accra, the capital. An artificial dune, twenty meters high today, has not stopped growing for fifteen years. “We burn the clothes over and over again, but there is always more. It makes us sick “, explains one of them. These fumes are probably toxic, although no studies have been performed.

Every day 160 tons of clothes arrive in Ghana, which no one wants in Western countries anymore. A whole economy has developed around these second-hand clothes. But very few are usable. More than 70 tons of fabric per day end up in the landfill, an ecological disaster. Liz Ricketts founded an NGO to understand the impact of textile pollution. “It will take years for the clothes to degrade, and during this time harmful and toxic microfibers are released into the environment,” explains the founder of The Gold Foundation. Brands and consumers are responsible according to this former New York stylist who calls for a change in consumption, as the lifespan of a garment keeps getting shorter. At least one in eight t-shirts ends up in an African landfill.