00:00:05
on the coast of West Africa
00:00:07
ships arrive day after day with an
00:00:11
unrelenting Cargo
00:00:13
[Music]
00:00:16
in Ghana they call them a Brawny wow
00:00:20
all the clothes of dead white men dig
00:00:24
this beer from Austria yeah the charity
00:00:27
Shop cast offs from the Western World
00:00:36
too many of them arrive in unwearable
00:00:39
condition
00:00:41
while the trade in used clothes has
00:00:44
created thousands of jobs
00:00:47
it's also turning parts of Ghana into a
00:00:51
toxic landfill it is blizzy serving as a
00:00:54
Dumping Ground for textile waste in the
00:00:57
name of a secondhand clothing
00:01:00
the world's unwanted fashion ends its
00:01:03
Journey here
00:01:08
we call them Pentacles when they first
00:01:11
wash up on sea they're very long
00:01:15
creating an environmental catastrophe of
00:01:19
Unthinkable proportions
00:01:22
[Music]
00:01:34
[Music]
00:01:39
in Accra the working day begins long
00:01:43
before Dawn
00:01:44
[Music]
00:01:56
as thousands of ghanaians make their
00:01:59
daily migration into the center of this
00:02:02
West African capital
00:02:06
from old Fatima accra's biggest slum
00:02:09
Aisha idrisu and her 18 month old son
00:02:13
Sharif joined the throng working in the
00:02:17
second hand clothes trade
00:02:20
okay
00:02:22
[Music]
00:02:31
one of each money yeah
00:02:41
[Music]
00:02:47
yeah now this one you said they are very
00:02:50
young man but watch myself
00:02:52
[Music]
00:02:55
come on
00:03:03
asari asamoa starts his day early too
00:03:08
he's a successful importer of used
00:03:10
clothing
00:03:13
I was follow my brother for us we are
00:03:17
doing in the business and unfortunately
00:03:19
my brother passed away so he handled
00:03:22
everything to me or am I always think
00:03:24
about him because he made me who I am
00:03:28
today new Bales arrive and asari is
00:03:32
checking on his order
00:03:35
yeah yeah
00:03:49
[Music]
00:03:52
with quality I hope you get a good one
00:03:58
these bails are being dispatched to
00:04:00
almost every corner of accra's
00:04:03
commercial heart
00:04:05
the sprawling cantonmento Market
00:04:11
[Music]
00:04:12
it's a bustling Labyrinth
00:04:15
where almost everything is for sale
00:04:28
35.
00:04:34
these markets are one of the biggest in
00:04:37
West Africa if not the world and they're
00:04:39
a central hub for second-hand clothing
00:04:41
from here they get shipped all over
00:04:44
Africa
00:04:44
[Music]
00:04:48
for the past two decades the resale of
00:04:52
Western cast offs has boomed here it's
00:04:55
created tens of thousands of jobs
00:05:09
these men and women are retailers eager
00:05:12
to seize the best clothes from a prized
00:05:15
new Bale and
00:05:27
they're old friends but this morning
00:05:30
there's lots at stake
00:05:38
they're also Arch competitors
00:05:41
if they don't grab the best clothes they
00:05:44
don't make money
00:06:19
[Music]
00:06:21
foreign
00:06:25
on her way to collect a bale of clothes
00:06:27
from asari the Importer
00:06:34
okay and now we'll follow now
00:06:37
right
00:06:39
yeah well right so we
00:06:44
uh okay all right
00:06:50
izakayo or headquarter
00:06:55
foreign
00:07:13
women are usually displaced from their
00:07:16
villages in the north of the country by
00:07:18
conflict or unemployment
00:07:24
[Music]
00:07:29
five dollars a day
00:07:32
foreign
00:07:40
she's carrying weighs more than 50
00:07:43
kilograms it's tough and dangerous work
00:07:51
this is
00:08:03
Saturday
00:08:06
[Music]
00:08:21
the trade and used clothing is also
00:08:23
risky for importers they pay up front as
00:08:27
much as 95 000 for a container with no
00:08:31
guarantee if the clothes inside it are
00:08:34
any good
00:08:47
it's not easy sometimes if you don't
00:08:50
have money to do business this business
00:08:52
it's not easy for you sometimes you go
00:08:55
and buy bought something then you cut
00:08:58
you'll not get what you want then you
00:09:00
lose your money asari Imports as many as
00:09:04
3 million items of used clothing every
00:09:07
year most of it from the United Kingdom
00:09:11
foreign
00:09:12
Western exporters with good quality
00:09:15
clothes profits are there for the taking
00:09:20
we're okay
00:09:23
so if you know inside that this goose is
00:09:25
fine that one you are going to buy it
00:09:27
then you get your profit if you don't
00:09:29
know that this goose is nicer you just
00:09:32
bought anything then you lose your money
00:09:34
asari also sells his newly imported
00:09:37
items to other retailers in cantonmento
00:09:41
Market
00:09:44
it looks like chaos but there's a method
00:09:46
to this madness these retailers are
00:09:49
picking the finest clothes that have
00:09:51
come in from the Bale in order to be
00:09:53
ready for Market Day
00:09:56
foreign
00:10:07
lives a few hours from the city center
00:10:11
in a good year importers can turn over a
00:10:14
hundred and forty thousand dollars
00:10:19
so the money I get I don't chop off I
00:10:22
just save some so I just save it
00:10:25
asari asamoa attributes his family's
00:10:28
success to divine intervention
00:10:32
and God has blessed what I'm doing and
00:10:35
God grace living in this house
00:10:38
it's very big conflict between Sunday
00:10:42
and my job the crew time sir that one is
00:10:45
somebody culture like a white man used
00:10:47
to wear it when going into office by
00:10:50
this one is our own culture
00:10:53
now it's Sunday and in this deeply
00:10:56
religious country it's a day for
00:10:58
traditional clothing
00:11:06
Western cast offs are so cheap that
00:11:09
local textile makers can't compete
00:11:12
since the 1980s their output has fallen
00:11:16
by as much as 75 percent
00:11:19
[Music]
00:11:26
traditional African clothing has now
00:11:29
become two
00:11:30
intuitive for everyday wear
00:11:37
Hallelujah
00:11:38
[Music]
00:11:48
[Applause]
00:11:57
[Music]
00:12:04
every evening with the markets customers
00:12:07
heading home a cleanup operation begins
00:12:13
foreign
00:12:18
clothing are swept up and bundled into
00:12:22
sacks ready for tomorrow's collection
00:12:30
[Music]
00:12:45
the next morning the sheer volume of
00:12:49
waste is staggering
00:12:53
[Music]
00:12:58
but before it's even been driven away
00:13:05
another load of used clothing appears
00:13:08
and is put up for sale
00:13:10
[Music]
00:13:17
[Applause]
00:13:23
solomonoy is the city's waste manager
00:13:27
this place is serving as a Dumping
00:13:29
Ground for textile waste in the name of
00:13:33
second-hand clothing
00:13:37
close to 40 percent of whatever shipment
00:13:40
that they are coming on a daily basis
00:13:42
ends up to be complete chaff
00:13:45
of no value
00:13:47
[Applause]
00:13:49
every day this truck is full to
00:13:52
overflowing
00:13:53
[Music]
00:14:08
[Music]
00:14:17
there's roughly 6 million garments every
00:14:20
week that leave cantonmento Market as
00:14:22
waste and a huge proportion of all of
00:14:26
that clothing is trucked two hours north
00:14:29
of Accra and ends up being dumped as
00:14:31
landfill
00:14:45
foreign
00:14:48
the pressure from the used clothing
00:14:50
industry is Relentless the city of Accra
00:14:54
now has to find somewhere to dispose of
00:14:57
more than 160 tons of textile waste
00:15:00
every single day
00:15:25
is a retailer who sells her stock
00:15:28
outside the city yeah
00:15:40
um
00:15:59
it's a hand-to-mouth existence for the
00:16:02
single mother of three who travels for
00:16:05
hours between candamanto market and
00:16:08
outlying villages
00:16:09
[Music]
00:16:20
she says she fell into the trade after
00:16:23
her brother used Juju from sorcery to
00:16:27
force her off the family farm
00:16:30
[Music]
00:16:35
dinner
00:16:38
is
00:16:50
[Music]
00:16:57
production
00:17:00
s yeah
00:17:03
[Music]
00:17:12
she goes from Village to Village selling
00:17:15
her clothes
00:17:26
these two dollar dresses are something
00:17:29
of a luxury item
00:17:31
I like food
00:17:36
christiana's arrival is a highlight of
00:17:39
the week
00:17:47
so to me yeah
00:18:00
but it's a precarious Enterprise because
00:18:03
many of her customers insist on being
00:18:05
granted credit
00:18:08
foreign
00:18:20
[Music]
00:18:33
works hard to care for her family but
00:18:36
it's becoming harder because the bales
00:18:39
of clothing being imported into Ghana
00:18:41
are arriving in worse and worse
00:18:44
conditions foreign
00:18:54
[Music]
00:19:11
[Music]
00:19:13
season in Ghana and when these Fierce
00:19:17
rains come
00:19:19
The Unwanted clothing washes into the
00:19:22
city's open sewers and chokes its
00:19:25
waterways
00:19:26
[Applause]
00:19:30
you know you're in the tropics so we
00:19:32
have very high precipitation that form
00:19:34
of rainfall so any heavy downfall of
00:19:38
rain will gather all these uncollected
00:19:41
with into the storm drains which are not
00:19:44
covered anyway and then it gets into the
00:19:46
ocean
00:19:48
it means all these layers of textile
00:19:51
without a
00:19:53
stockpiling at the ocean bed
00:19:56
and that is what will choke The Aquatic
00:19:59
Life in there
00:20:03
yeah this is like dug into the ground so
00:20:06
when we've done cleanups here you can
00:20:08
dig like 15 feet and still signs Tangles
00:20:12
of clothing
00:20:14
Liz Ricketts has spent the past decade
00:20:16
documenting the impact of clothing waste
00:20:18
on Ghana so it also becomes really
00:20:21
dangerous for people when they're
00:20:22
swimming
00:20:23
because they're like rolling back and
00:20:26
forth and it'll hit them and then also
00:20:29
hits the fisherman's boats and wraps
00:20:31
around their Motors the textiles which
00:20:33
wash back onshore become so tangled in
00:20:37
the sand they're almost impossible to
00:20:40
dig out
00:20:44
[Music]
00:20:50
so this you know is all tangled up and
00:20:53
it's a little bit harder for you to see
00:20:54
but when they first wash up there very
00:20:56
long you know they can be eight feet to
00:20:58
30 feeds and sometimes three feet wide
00:21:03
these tentacles have their Origins at
00:21:06
candamanto Market
00:21:14
[Music]
00:21:21
[Applause]
00:21:27
Emmanuel yeah hello hey wow Linton
00:21:30
better ABC yeah wow
00:21:33
nice to meet you thank you
00:21:36
Emmanuel ajab is another importer
00:21:41
we are going to take this beer
00:21:43
this one yeah
00:21:46
this one from Austria we want to see
00:21:50
what is inside
00:21:53
and it's a ladies summer jacket
00:21:58
he's one of the few to import used
00:22:00
clothing from Australia
00:22:05
yeah
00:22:07
I'm going to open
00:22:09
will shut them into groups okay until
00:22:13
they open their Bales importers have no
00:22:16
idea whether they contain trash or
00:22:19
treasure
00:22:21
so this one's going like this top
00:22:23
quality okay here we can't wear this one
00:22:26
so is that going to be rubbish yeah this
00:22:28
is rubbish
00:22:31
and this one too
00:22:33
we'll call it the second second okay
00:22:36
you can't wear it yeah this one is going
00:22:39
to look it's got it it's got a stain
00:22:42
here
00:22:45
Emmanuel and his colleagues despair at
00:22:48
the growing number of low quality
00:22:50
clothes arriving in Ghana
00:22:53
what do you think of this one see how it
00:22:56
is
00:22:58
from here or ladies it's sweat you
00:23:02
should not put it in the bed it's lucky
00:23:04
so it's an insults
00:23:08
in Europe and UK and Australia American
00:23:12
they think Africa here we are we are not
00:23:17
like a human being sorry to say that you
00:23:20
use this because what they are giving to
00:23:22
us is like even if somebody knock your
00:23:25
door and he won't help you you cannot
00:23:28
just giving picking something from your
00:23:31
Dustbin and give to the person so in
00:23:33
this case it's like they are doing this
00:23:36
to us
00:23:37
this pile cost Emmanuel 92 dollars
00:23:44
this ones are the ones you can sell okay
00:23:47
after sorting the whole Bale he can see
00:23:50
he's going to make a significant loss on
00:23:53
these Australian clothes five six seven
00:23:58
foreign and how many all together in a
00:24:01
bail
00:24:02
this one the uh
00:24:05
180 to 200 pieces in the Bell
00:24:08
and you'll find seven pieces very bad
00:24:13
so at the end of today where will you
00:24:16
put that we are going to throw them away
00:24:22
the problem is there's no room anywhere
00:24:25
in Accra left to throw them
00:24:27
[Music]
00:24:31
this massive carefully engineered
00:24:34
landfill was meant to be the solution to
00:24:37
acura's waste crisis it should have
00:24:39
provided enough capacity for 15 years
00:24:42
but once it started accepting clothing
00:24:45
waste from cantonmento Market was filled
00:24:48
to overflowing within just five
00:24:56
[Music]
00:25:15
now the city's only alternative is a
00:25:19
growing network of informal unregulated
00:25:21
dumps
00:25:23
[Music]
00:25:27
so a lot of the waste is brought here by
00:25:30
informal collectors who pick it up at
00:25:32
the end of the day
00:25:34
like this one on the edge of old Fatima
00:25:37
the city's biggest slum
00:25:40
[Music]
00:25:44
it doesn't look like there's anything
00:25:45
wrong with them at all
00:25:47
synthetic textiles can take hundreds of
00:25:50
years to decompose
00:25:52
this mountain of waste May cast its
00:25:55
fettered shadow over these neighborhoods
00:25:58
for generations to come
00:26:00
[Music]
00:26:10
I think unfortunately what happens is
00:26:13
that the waste they are blamed for the
00:26:16
waste the people of old Fatima are not
00:26:19
responsible for this problem but they
00:26:21
are forced to live with it then this
00:26:24
waste ends up in places like this where
00:26:26
it's used to further disenfranchise
00:26:28
people who are already living in poverty
00:26:30
to blame them for ways that they did not
00:26:32
create
00:26:39
while all consumers bear some
00:26:41
responsibility for this waste crisis Liz
00:26:44
Ricketts lays much of the blame at the
00:26:46
door of the world's big fashion houses
00:26:49
really it's Brands it's brands that are
00:26:52
over producing waste is a part of the
00:26:54
business model of fashion a lot of
00:26:55
Brands overproduce by up to 40 percent
00:27:00
so when did they start burning this
00:27:03
uh at least three weeks ago much of The
00:27:07
Unwanted clothing is simply burned
00:27:11
[Music]
00:27:15
It's Not Unusual for accra's Sky to
00:27:19
Blacken with smoke for days at a time
00:27:24
[Music]
00:27:27
thank you
00:27:31
[Music]
00:27:39
[Music]
00:27:51
[Music]
00:27:58
for many who live in Old Fatima
00:28:01
including Aisha idrisu the flow of
00:28:05
second-hand clothing into Ghana has been
00:28:07
a lifeline
00:28:13
[Music]
00:28:29
there are other problems which are
00:28:32
simply more pressing
00:28:34
foreign
00:28:36
[Music]
00:28:39
with four other women and all their
00:28:43
worldly belongings
00:28:49
today
00:28:54
so perhaps it's for the West instead to
00:28:57
think more carefully about the quality
00:29:00
of what we donate
00:29:02
I'm not sure they've ever been conscious
00:29:05
to ask where is the final destination of
00:29:09
that thing they are discarding but if
00:29:11
they come here like you've come and see
00:29:13
the practicality for yourself then they
00:29:16
will know that no we better take care of
00:29:19
this thing within our country and not to
00:29:22
ship the problem to other peoples
00:29:35
thank you
