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How 7.5 Million Pounds Of Donated Clothes End Up At A Market In Ghana Every Week | World Wide Waste - YouTube
Channel: Business Insider
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welcome to one of the largest used
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clothing markets in the world
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hey why city why it's estimated that
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ghana's contamanto market handles more
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than 15 million garments every week
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the used clothes arrive from around the
[19]
world
[19]
many started out as donations
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about 30 000 people work here
[29]
these days they struggle to make a
[30]
living from cheaply made fast fashion
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brands
[36]
more than a third of everything that
[38]
enters contamanto leaves as waste it
[40]
ends up in landfills and on beaches what
[44]
we believe is that what you're seeing is
[46]
a sliver of what is actually lying on
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the ocean floor
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now ghana's capital is drowning in other
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people's used clothes
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so how do the clothes end up here and
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why do so much of the leftovers become
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worldwide waste
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[Music]
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around 100 shipping containers filled
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with millions of garments arrive at the
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market every week
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they arrive in these bales
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that can weigh up to 125 pounds
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headquarters walk up to 10 miles on
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their busiest days
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carrying bales from the containers to
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the stalls
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[Music]
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retailers buy bales for anywhere from
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100 to three hundred dollars without
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knowing exactly what's inside
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jeanette
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started selling clothes 12 years ago by
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the side of the road and saved enough
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money to rent her own shop in the market
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hey
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jeanette usually tries to sell the
[131]
contents of one bale before buying
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another
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then it's a race against time to move
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the inventory and try to make her money
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back
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the good stuff can sell for about 10 cds
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that's about 1.60 a piece
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items made with cheaper fabric or that
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have rips go for 16 cents
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m
[171]
jeannette says prices of the bales
[173]
increase every month
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even though the quality of the clothes
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has declined
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so most weeks she can't sell everything
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from her bales
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she's often in debt
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sometimes the money she makes barely
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covers a week's expenses
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[Music]
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jeanette also partners with tailors like
[198]
nana to fix tears or resize a garment
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for a customer
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she pays nana 16 cents for repairing the
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tear in her blouse
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other tailors buff shoes to change their
[234]
color
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or die in starch denim jeans to make
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them look like new
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in another area workers steam press
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garments before they go on display
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you see the way i'm squeezing my face
[253]
the fire burns me
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they use coal to heat their irons
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then smooth a wet cloth over the garment
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to create steam
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see it
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becomes smooth
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the market is flooded with cheap
[271]
garments from so-called fast fashion
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brands like marks and spencer and zara
[276]
edema
[282]
so every day many of the clothes that
[284]
don't sell are dumped in old fatima
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it's a small community with a big
[290]
landfill
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some piles of trash tower over 30 feet
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taller than some buildings around here
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the dump is a breeding ground for
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mosquitoes that spread malaria and the
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water can spread cholera cloth is soft
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waters so we just put some dust on top
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so that we should be able to step on top
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and what doesn't go to landfill often
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ends up at beaches like this one a mile
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away from contamanto
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very degraded today activists are
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tracking how clothing waste washes out
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to sea so a lot of the clothing waste
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from contemporanzo will basically be
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swept into the open gutter system and
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then it'll tangle around itself it
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contributes to flooding which then
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causes a public health crisis and
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eventually though it will be pushed out
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to sea and it will make its way to the
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bottom of the ocean
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liz ricketts is the co-founder of the
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ore foundation a charity based in the
[359]
u.s and ghana it brings attention to
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accra as one end of a wasteful supply
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chain
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this team is measuring what they call
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tentacles
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long tangles of fabric and sand
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they found over three hundred and fifty
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piles of clothing along the coast in
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just the first two months of doing this
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work
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second clothing market is not a bad
[381]
thing but then i can see that
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it is causing much damage at our beaches
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the most common brands found on the
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beach so far
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marx and spencer
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next
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h m
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nike and gildam
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this is very bad
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clothing is literally looks like a rock
[401]
and is being walked on top of as if it's
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part of the natural landscape and it's
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it's devastating to see
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[Music]
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so how do donated clothes end up here
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americans often donate clothes to
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charities like goodwill or salvation
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army that later sell those in their
[424]
stores for a low price
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but not everything sells so donation
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centers turn to exporters like bank and
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vogue our business is very much like
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cleaning up the the beer cans at three
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o'clock in the morning steven bethel
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sells clothes from the u.s canada and
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europe to 27 countries around the world
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he sells shipping containers filled with
[446]
clothes to what's known as a grading
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facility
[450]
graders in places like pakistan sort
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millions of pieces of used clothing into
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hundreds of categories
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ladies tops for the office lady tops for
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casual ladies jeans men's jeans
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children's clothes skirts ladies shorts
[464]
men's shorts lingerie pajamas corduroys
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is its own category the most valuable
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item women's bras
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if you're at home and you're looking at
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your bra and you think oh the wire is
[475]
sticking out or this isn't right donate
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your bras there's never enough used bras
[480]
graters are supposed to weed out items
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no one will buy
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but those low quality clothes can slip
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through the cracks and end up in
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contamanto anyways
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we were visiting with a retailer to
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study the material content of the waste
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and we found that over 90 percent of the
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bail that she had purchased just two
[497]
days before
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was completely stained
[501]
the stain smelled in some places and was
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sticky in some places
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so she was only able to salvage like
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less than 20 items from that entire bail
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liz says more than a third of the
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clothes at contamanto go to waste
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but her organization is trying to do
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something about it welcome to our lab
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space says no more man capital fast
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fashion the business that was here
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before was called man capital
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the ore foundation recently built a lab
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here to figure out how to recycle
[534]
clothing waste retailers like jeanette
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are learning how to shred unsold clothes
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to sell as insulation for mattresses and
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furniture
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but shredding is a last resort because
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it doesn't turn a large profit
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headquarters can also learn how to sew
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here gaining skills that help them leave
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the dangerous work of carrying bales on
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their heads
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so abiba adam ayesha has been working
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with the foundation since april 2021
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[Music]
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yeah we need help serious help for us to
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live on this situation to have our peace
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because we don't have peace
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for liz the issue is much bigger than
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just contamanto
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she wants to hold the global fashion
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industry accountable for creating this
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mess our goal with this work has never
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been to cancel the secondhand clothing
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trade it has been to make it better and
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for us this is all about the root
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problem which is overproduction over
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consumption of fast fashion in the
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global north
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one tool to do that could be the law
[610]
the european union the united kingdom
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and parts of the us are considering laws
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that would make fashion brands fund
[617]
clothing recycling
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so far france and sweden are the only
[621]
countries to pass what are known as
[623]
extended producer responsibility laws
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for the textile industry
[628]
it's nearly impossible to eliminate
[630]
clothing waste but liz thinks the global
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north could learn from across
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second-hand market
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if we had a version of this in our malls
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and buy our clothes and then next door
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there was a tailor or seamstress who
[643]
could alter it
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we wouldn't be producing so much waste
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and for consumers the solution is even
[651]
simpler
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buy less
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[Music]
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you
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