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Garment Graveyard in Africa's Backyard? Ghanaian Traders Want EU to Curb 'Fast Fashion' Dumping
Garment Graveyard in Africa's Backyard? Ghanaian Traders Want EU to Curb 'Fast Fashion' Dumping
Sputnik Africa
The delegation of secondhand clothes dealers from Ghana came to Brussels to push for European-wide legislation that would force the fashion industry to help tackle the "ecological disaster" of dumping textiles in Ghana.
2023-05-31T14:44+0200
2023-05-31T14:44+0200
2023-08-03T10:49+0200
ghana
european union (eu)
sub-saharan africa
waste dump
trade
west africa
east africa
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A delegation of secondhand clothing dealers from Ghana came to Brussels to lobby for European-wide legislation that would force the fashion industry to help tackle the "ecological disaster" of dumping huge amounts of textiles in the West African country, according to the British media.A group of retailers from the capital's Kantamanto Market, one of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world, came together with Alice Bah Kuhnke, a member of the European Parliament for Sweden, environmental organizations and members of the European Commission and the European Environment Bureau. During the meeting, the traders emphasized the importance of the proposed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which should ensure that Ghana receives funds to manage the 100 tonnes of clothing discarded daily in the market.Under the current policy, clothing manufacturers say, they pay as little as $0.06 per item, which is considered insufficient, and the money collected does not benefit countries like Ghana, which shoulder the brunt of overproduction and consumption in richer countries.To remedy it, the Kantamanto traders are lobbying to increase the fee to $0.5 per item, with a fair portion going to countries that receive secondhand clothing. They also propose allocating at least 10% of the revenues to an environmental fund aimed at cleaning up past damage.The retailers also want new legislation to acknowledge the role of Kantamanto’s workers in recycling the Global North’s cast-offs.Solomon Noi, part of the delegation and director of waste management for Accra metropolitan assembly, told the media that it was impossible for the city to cope with the volume of market waste, stressing that the waste management infrastructure and logistics are the responsibility of the Global North.The Or Foundation is also calling on clothing companies to divulge the amount of garments they produce each year and to commit to a 40-percent reduction in production.Other African countries have also chosen to deal with the influx of secondhand clothes. Thus, since 2016, the East African Community has been encouraging member states to buy clothing and footwear made in the region in order to stimulate local production. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi were supposed to phase out used clothing trade by 2019, but only Rwanda implemented the plan by imposing high taxes on imported goods.
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ghana slams eu, ghana clothing dumping
ghana slams eu, ghana clothing dumping
Garment Graveyard in Africa's Backyard? Ghanaian Traders Want EU to Curb 'Fast Fashion' Dumping
14:44 31.05.2023 (Updated: 10:49 03.08.2023) The 2022 report of the Or Foundation, an American human rights and environmental NGO, estimated that about 15 million individual pieces of used clothing enter Ghana each week, but that 40% of them are discarded because of poor quality.
A delegation of secondhand clothing dealers from Ghana came to Brussels to lobby for European-wide legislation that would force the fashion industry to help tackle the "ecological disaster" of dumping huge amounts of textiles in the West African country, according to the British media.
A group of retailers from the capital's Kantamanto Market, one of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world, came together with Alice Bah Kuhnke, a member of the European Parliament for Sweden, environmental organizations and members of the European Commission and the European Environment Bureau.
During the meeting, the traders emphasized the importance of the proposed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which should ensure that
Ghana receives funds to manage the 100 tonnes of clothing discarded daily in the market.
Critics claim that existing EPR policies, such as those implemented in France, perform poorly in addressing the problems faced by "end-of-line" countries such as Ghana.
Under the current policy, clothing manufacturers say, they pay as little as $0.06 per item, which is considered insufficient, and the money collected does not benefit countries like Ghana, which shoulder the brunt of overproduction and consumption in richer countries.
To remedy it, the Kantamanto
traders are lobbying to increase the fee to $0.5 per item, with a fair portion going to countries that receive secondhand clothing. They also propose allocating at least 10% of the revenues to an environmental fund aimed at cleaning up past damage.
The retailers also want new legislation to acknowledge the role of Kantamanto’s workers in recycling the Global North’s cast-offs.
"By nearly any other measure, recirculating 6 million items of clothing weekly is an astonishing feat. What leaves Kantamanto Market as waste does so largely because there is simply too much clothing, not because people are not working hard to manage it," the Waste Landscape report said.
Solomon Noi, part of the delegation and director of waste management for Accra metropolitan assembly, told the media that it was impossible for the city to cope with the volume of market waste, stressing that the waste management infrastructure and logistics are the responsibility of the Global North.
"We rely on our taxes [to raise money] to manage the waste, but taxes go to education, health," Noi said. "Little is left to manage textile waste. And why should I work hard to get my taxes to get rid of your [the global north’s] waste? We have had enough."
The Or Foundation is also calling on clothing companies to divulge the amount of garments they produce each year and to commit to a 40-percent reduction in production.
Other African countries have also chosen to deal with the influx of secondhand clothes. Thus, since 2016, the East African Community has been encouraging member states to buy clothing and footwear made in the region in order to stimulate local production. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi were supposed to phase out used clothing trade by 2019, but only Rwanda implemented the plan by imposing high taxes on imported goods.
