Fixing Fashion research trip to Ghana (Patreon)

Back in January 2020 (you know when everything was normal and smooth) we took Patreon money (about 2500€ 😘) and sent a small team to Ghana to visit what is considered the biggest second-hand market in Africa and possibly the world, Kantamanto. 

This is where all the donated and charity clothes from US, Europe and the likes end up. We're talking about 15 million items per week. Huge. And after 2 months of research, it really looks more like an act of dumping rather than the well-intentioned donation it might have seemed at first.

When clothes are donated, they are sorted by quality in sorting centres. From a European perspective the A quality goes to second-hand stores in the same country, B quality goes to East European countries or North Africa and C goes to West Africa, East Africa or India, D Quality is not wearable for any standards and goes straight into landfill. 

C quality is mainly clothing from any fast fashion brands. Little value there. If you donate this, there is quite a big chance it ends up in Kantamanto, in Accra, Ghana. And there's tons of it. Despite the right efforts of a small army of talented people still 40% of the clothes that enter Kantamanto end up in landfill, the ocean or rivers after two weeks. That’s close to 4 million items of clothing waste. 

Kantamanto was a huge inspiration for Fixing Fashion (coming out April 19th, save the date!), a small army of collaborative retailers, repairers, tailors, upcyclers, dyers and silkscreen printers taking care and giving a second life to what a small part of the world considers waste.