Your fast-fashion hauls will pollute Africa’s beaches for years – second-hand shops cannot keep up

Shoppers are buying far more clothes and discarding far more – and the charity sector is forced to dispose of textile waste it cannot reuse in a variety of ways

Much of it ends up in African countries like Ghana, polluting its seas, rivers and forests ‘for decades or even centuries to come’, activist says

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Customers are purchasing far more fast fashion and discarding far more – and Africa is paying the price. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:15pm, 4 Oct 2022Updated: 2:35am, 5 Oct 2022

When putting yet another item in an already overstuffed wardrobe feels all but impossible, you know it is time to Marie Kondo your clothes.

Some of our cast-offs we sell online; the rest we take to charity shops – and after we have dropped them off, we walk away with the satisfaction of knowing we have done something good.

Except that it is a lot more complicated than that.

The circularity of charity-sector fashion worked well in the days when people tended to buy well-made, durable clothing that had a proper resale value. Today, for all the talk of the planet-saving properties of buying second-hand, the market is less suited to it.

Burned clothes in the province of Alicante in Spain. The rise of fast fashion means customers are purchasing far more and therefore discarding far more. Photo: Shutterstock

That is largely because of the rise of fast fashion; customers are purchasing far more and therefore discarding far more. According to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, the number of times a garment was worn by people in Western countries declined by 36 per cent over the past 15 years, while the number of garments bought by the average consumer has more than doubled over the same period.