"Traders in the world's largest secondhand clothes market want reparations for chronic pollution caused by fast fashion"
"ACCRA - Last year's must-have dress, yesterday's flares and countless other Western castoffs are strangling the Global South, prompting calls for fast fashion to pay the price for rampant overproduction.
Every week, some 15 million items of used clothes end up in Ghana's capital, shipped in bales from Europe, North America and Asia to the world's biggest secondhand clothes market.
Almost half the imported clothes are then junked, says the Accra-based Or Foundation, which is campaigning for reparations for the pollution caused by consumer fads whole continents away.
"Many of these garments should have been disposed of there, yet they put them into bales and ship them here. Fast fashion is fuelling waste, and they should not continue to expect us to use our taxes to process the industry's excesses," said Solomon Noi, head of waste management in the Ghanaian capital of Accra."
Bukola Adebayo reports for Thomson Reuters Foundation August 31, 2023.
SEE ALSO:
"Fast Fashion Firms Prepare For EU Crackdown On Waste Mountain" (Reuters)
"I Learned New Hobbies To Ditch Fast Fashion. You Can, Too." (Washington Post)
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