<
https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-03-01/where-do-the-clothes-go-after-we-put-them-in-a-recycling-bin-an-11-month-investigation-covering-thousands-of-kilometers.html>
"On the beaches of Accra, the sea vomits up old clothes. The sand in Akuma
Village is covered with a carpet of shoes and plastics entangled with shirts,
shoelaces and pants. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of what is currently
floating in the ocean. A few miles away on solid ground rises a series of
multi-colored hills. This is no idyllic landscape, but rather, gigantic
mountains of used clothing that has come from Europe, China and the United
States. Some are on fire, emitting black toxic smoke from the combustion of
synthetic fibers. It leaves the air thick, sour-smelling.
Ghana is an extreme case, but it’s not the only example of how countries
throughout the Global South such as Pakistan, Kenya and Morocco play a
fundamental role in the system of hyper-production of cheap clothes. These are
the places that make it possible for us to buy shirts we don’t need and dresses
we’ll wear once, or never. They are the textile landfills that sustain “fast
fashion,” which in countries like Ghana has led to an environmental and public
health disaster. In Africa, it’s known as “dead white man’s clothes” and some
nations like Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe have prohibited or restricted the
importation of what they call “textile neocolonialism.”
To learn how we got here and exactly what happens when, with all the good
intentions in the world, we deposit a garment in a secondhand clothing donation
bin, EL PAÍS embarked on nearly a year of investigation that has allowed us to
corroborate the final destination of 15 garments whose path we followed, thanks
to geolocation technology. The results were revealing. The majority continue
circulating or are in warehouses or empty lots. Half have traveled to foreign
countries, leaving a monumental carbon footprint in their wake, contaminating
the Global South and feeding into opaque commercial networks. That is to say,
clothing doesn’t always end up in the place we imagine when we get rid of it
and even when it does, the ecological footprint of its journey is immense."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
