Unreported World

Fast Fashion's Toxic Legacy (2022x3)

Air date: Apr 08, 2022

Ashionye Ogene travels to the bustling market of Kantamanto, in Ghana's capital city Accra, to meet the traders struggling to sell the clothes the UK no longer wants. In 2019, roughly 63 million kilograms of clothes were imported into Ghana from the UK to 30,000 traders, who relied on good-quality second-hand clothes to make a living. However, what isn't sold is going to waste and contributing to an environmental catastrophe. Mountains of waste exist on the outskirts of the city, much of which can take up to 200 years to decompose, with excess waste spilling over into the city's slums.