What happens to the textiles we donate? Emily Macintosh traces the journey of used clothing and their impact on communities and nature overseas.
When an item of clothing is donated to charity in Europe, chances are it is about to go on a long journey through the global second-hand textile trade.
That dress you never liked very much might end up packed up in a bale with hundreds of other cast offs and exported on a shipping container, ending up in a second-hand market in a country such as Ghana.
The global second-hand clothing trade has increased sevenfold in the past four decades, and Ghana is one of the world’s largest importers of used attire. In 2023, Ghana imported 143,915 tonnes of used clothing – with 53,970 tonnes coming from EU countries such as the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Italy and Belgium. However, used textiles are often re-exported through multiple countries, obscuring the statistics on where they were first discarded.
The global trade in used textiles is just one example of Europe’s excessive contribution to global resource use. And while EU policies that aim to reduce fashion waste and make the most of natural resources are under development – such as the revision of the Waste Framework Directive – for the 30,000 people who work informally in the resale, repair, and remanufacture of imported second-hand textiles at the Ghanaian capital’s Kantamanto market, circularity is already part of their daily reality.
The Kantamanto market in Accra is one of the world’s largest reuse and remanufacturing hubs. Few places compare to its large, highly-skilled workforce on the frontline of textile circularity, especially in the countries that send used clothing to Ghana.
But unpacking the bales they invest in to prepare the clothes for resale is a lottery for the retailers working in Kantamanto. Research shows that around 40% of each bale imported into Ghana contains items retailers cannot make any profit from: some would require significant investment to make them sellable, others are totally unsuitable for Ghana’s tropical climate, or are in such bad condition that they are beyond repair. If retailers cannot sell the clothing in the bales and consistently lose money after investing in them, this leaves them in a debt cycle.
At the same time, if retailers cannot generate economic value from second-hand clothing imports, this also means there is little financial capacity left over to invest in safety and infrastructure at the market. On 2 January 2025, a devastating fire broke out at Kantamanto, destroying 60% of the market. While the exact cause of the fire is still unknown, concerns about fire safety have long been raised. And with the alleyways in the market too narrow for carts to move through, the only way to transport the 55kg bales is through head-carrying – carried out by women known as ‘Kayayei’, who suffer devastating spinal injuries as a result.
The large amounts of imported clothing that cannot be sold cause major environmental problems for Ghana. Due to a lack of municipal funding and infrastructure to cope with the amount of waste, textiles clog up over 100 hectares of dumpsites and polluted zones in Accra, more than 15 hectares of decommissioned landfills, and pollute more than 10 kilometres of the coastline. Poor quality synthetic items that take decades to break down damage coastal habitats, resulting in turtles being unable to scoop sand to deposit their eggs. Moreover, plastic microfibres shed from textiles enter the food chain, affecting aquatic life and, in turn, human health.
Kantamanto is just one example of the social and environmental challenges associated with the used textile trade, which are ultimately caused by the soaring volumes of new textile products being placed on the global market each year.
As the EU develops new rules on textile waste management, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and the Environmental Coalition on Standards (ECOS) demand enhanced end-of-waste criteria, better rules for waste shipment, and strong schemes to make producers cover the costs of textile waste – so-called ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ (EPR).
The EU must take responsibility for the unsustainable volumes of textiles it discards, and not shift the burden to communities outside the EU. The time is now to ensure EPR schemes effectively support the regions that are heavily impacted by used textile exports from the EU, tighten up the rules around the murky export trade, and – above all – reduce the excessive oversupply of new textiles produced every year in the first place.
