Liz Ricketts - cofounder of the OR Foundation, wrote an open letter to the fashion industry where she insists there can be no sustainability revolution without justice throughout the global supply chain; the time for a circular economy is now.
Dear Fashion industry.
Let’s talk about waste.
We are on the verge of a waste revolution—a revolution of waste technology and of systems driven by a revolution in the way we think about waste. Some people and organizations call this revolution the Circular Economy. Others prefer the language of regenerative systems. Whatever model or lexicon we choose, waste is quickly moving from out of sight, out of mind to the center of design, business, media, and education. The away has moved from a myth to the marketplace, which is to say that waste is no longer “waste,” but instead has been reimagined as a “resource,” an “asset,” a “nutrient,” and an “opportunity.” Corporate marketing campaigns claim that waste is now “beautiful,” and that waste is no longer a “problem,” rather it is the “solution.” I’ve heard people talk about waste as a “trend to design into” and other people call circularity the “waste-to-gold” revolution.
When so much of the fashion industry runs on a business model that extracts finite resources to produce an infinite amount of stuff, any conversation about recycling waste feels like progress. If we could just turn that stuff back into resources, then everything would be fine—right? It’s not so simple.
Waste and greed are two sides of the same destructive path. This means that waste cannot be revolutionized without a greater reckoning and reconciliation. And I don’t see much reckoning. What I see is a mass depoliticization of waste.
Kantamanto is one of the largest resale and upcycling economies in the world. It is a vibrant, bustling hub of what the Global North now calls sustainability. It is also a mess.
In Kantamanto, 30,000 people work six days a week to sell, repair, clean, and upcycle the Global North’s clothing waste. This should be applauded, but it should not be romanticized. These 30,000 people take on a level of risk that is unjust. Many of Kantamanto’s retailers take out loans with 35 percent interest rates to purchase the bales of clothing that have been shipped from all over the world; clothing that has, in most cases, been donated for free by consumers or collected by brands as deadstock write-offs. With only 20 percent of Kantamanto’s retailers making a profit, many refer to their business as a “gambling job.” On top of the steep financial risk associated with this business, the labor is physically backbreaking and spiritually dehumanizing.
And then there is the waste.
Roughly 15 million garments flow through Kantamanto Market on a weekly basis. Kantamanto’s ecosystem of retailers, dyers, printers, cleaners, tailors, and upcyclers recommodify exponentially more clothing than any “modern,” technology-enabled resale platform in the Global North. For comparison, ThredUp’s 2020 report states that they have “recirculated” (an unclear term) 100 million items total and 4 million “fast-fashion” items since ThredUp began as a business in 2009. Kantamanto recirculates (in this case, meaning rehabilitates and resells) 100 million items—the overwhelming majority of them “fast-fashion”—every 4 months. But unlike resale platforms like ThredUp, there is no outlet for the clothing that Kantamanto cannot sell. If our clothing lives within a linear economy then Kantamanto is the end of the line. Not only is there nowhere for unsold clothing to go after Kantamanto, but for Kantamanto retailers, there is nothing even resembling the hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that ThredUp, and similar platforms, have received.
Despite the best efforts of Kantamanto’s entrepreneurs, 40 percent of the clothing leaves the market as waste. Accra lacks the landfill space for this clothing waste, so much of it is burned in the open air, swept into the gutter from where it eventually makes its way to the sea, or dumped in informal settlements where Accra’s most vulnerable citizens live.
The minds of foreigners are still capable of collapsing all the richness that Ghana represents into an extraction site for foreign benefit.
Secondhand clothing that was unwanted by citizens of the global North. Thinking that their clothes will find a second life with someone who needs the thing that they no longer want, most people have truly kind, however naive, intentions when they donate clothing. Most people believe that the clothes they donate will be kept out of landfill. Clothing donations are billed as socially positive and environmentally sustainable. And now, many companies are marketing their own take-back clothing collection programs as the green way to shop for new clothes, often rewarding consumers with an in-store credit for dropping their old clothes in their bins. But the purported sustainability of the global secondhand clothing trade is founded on the deficit myth. It is true that there is too much clothing in the Global North, but it is not true that there is a deficit of clothing in the Global South.
The truth is that most of what ends up in Kantamanto is donated simply because fast-fashion requires turn over, not attachment. Fast fashion isn’t made to be loved, to be kept, to be cared for. Clothing is donated because there is a never-ending supply of new clothing to replace it. The secondhand trade is the outlet necessary for the firsthand trade to exist.
Few people understand this because there is almost zero transparency or traceability in the secondhand supply chain. What you may know as “secondhand” is the primary supply chain for millions of human beings, including millions of Ghanaian citizens. If there were transparency and traceability we would understand that the ethics of secondhand are not so simple. Clothing donations, collection, sorting, exporting, importing, and resale is a big business reaching nearly every corner of the globe in the same way that the creation of new, firsthand clothes does; one industry does not exist without the other. Secondhand clothing is part of the Fashion Industry.
The fact that we—consumers, fashion industry advocates, and even secondhand clothing exporters—know so little about the “afterlife” of our donations speaks to our priorities and underscores the colonial legacy of secondhand markets. The story of Kantamanto is not something new, rather for decades it has been both intentionally hidden and unintentionally overlooked thanks to the implicit bias of those, myself included, who are complicit in upholding and advancing white supremacy. And only now, as the conversation around circularity has become embedded within a fashion industry seeking to rebrand itself as green, does the story of Kantamanto’s overflowing waste seem relevant to the brands searching for their next “goldmine.”
This has everything to do with profit and nothing to do with impact: A clothing company that calls itself “circular” while continuing to overproduce is not interested in solving the problem—it is interested in extracting profit from the problem.
While “goldmine” might roll off the tongue as a seemingly benign corporatism, it is insulting and painful for those who have been doing the work. It is insulting to the Ghanaian designers who have been upcycling and using deadstock because secondhand clothing is the only material available to them now that the secondhand clothing trade has decimated their local textile economy. It’s insulting to the thousands of retailers who clean, iron, dye, sort, and clip threads from our unwashed donations. And to the kayayei who transport clothing from here to there and back again, over and over and over, literally risking their lives so that each garment has a shot at another life. “Goldmine” isn’t just a word—it is an attitude and orientation toward the world.
Another phrase comes to mind: it takes money to make money. In many ways, this is the pervasive motto of capitalism, implying that the people willing and able to risk the most financial capital can reap the most rewards. But what about the people risking the most human capital? We need to reckon with the fact that the people who shoulder the most risk are not the people with the most secure profit stream and that the companies now calling waste beautiful are the companies that have never dealt with the ugly truth of waste.
A materials economy where waste is considered a resource is not revolutionary if this system continues to operate within a global economy built on colonial trade routes, extractive capitalism, and a growth imperative. This model will substitute waste for raw resources, but it will do so in a way that takes us down the same destructive path that we have been on.
We have to be explicit about what we want for the future of fashion.
I don’t want to turn waste into “gold.” I want the waste dumped in Ghana to be recovered so that soil can be regenerated to support food sovereignty and so that free, clean drinking water can flow. I don’t want the waste to be recovered so that clothing can be turned into more clothing. There is a difference.
Justice will not be the inevitable byproduct of take-back programs, clothing donations, or recycling technology. Fashion’s waste crisis is the result of compounded exploitation. Without a concerted effort, circularity does nothing to address the colonial legacies on which the prevailing fashion industry is built. In fact, by decoupling resource constraints from corporate growth, circularity could turn even more of the world into a corporate colony. But it doesn’t have to.
Firstly, we must talk about production quantities and then we must reduce them. There is too much clothing in the world. This is not a radical opinion. It is a fact. I’ve seen the end of fashion’s linear economy and it is literally overflowing into the ocean. As a global society, we do not need more clothing. Any brand who says otherwise is delusional or outright lying. Many independent brands speak openly about this but Big Fashion does not. Brands should be required to publish information about how many units they produce of each item that they sell. Journalists should ask questions about production volumes, and media outlets should illustrate the excessive scale of production in the same way that some clever people have illustrated the mind boggling difference between median income and billionaire wealth. As advocates like Aja Barber have said, we can no longer divorce scale from impact.
Secondly, we must redistribute wealth; this can come in many forms. After all, a circle is inherently redistributive.
The Circular Economy, as promoted by the titans of linear industries, has been ripe for greenwashing because it is a materials-based framework with little mention of people and no mention of capital. As a result, brands launch take-back programs before they pay an actual living wage. In fact, it seems as though the companies investing the most in the circular economy are also the most likely to be exploiting garment workers. We should also illustrate the gap between garment worker pay and CEO earnings and stop giving center stage to the people who are openly exploiting thousands of people for personal gain. With wages so low and environmental consequences externalized, clothing is so disposable that store returns are not worth restocking and are instead landfilled or diverted into the secondhand economy. Through the prevailing model of the fashion industry, brands are invested in disposability. Paying garment workers a living wage is not only just, it is perhaps the most accessible mechanism we have to catalyze a divestment from overproduction. There are several possible legal mechanisms that could accelerate the living wage prerogative. By way of example, I suggest looking at some of the recent initiatives around which the #PayUp Movement is organizing.
Another form of wealth distribution is eco-reparations and equitable investments in communities like Kantamanto who have been trying to clean up fashion’s mess for decades. The people who live in proximity to the problem are also closest to the solutions. The Global North loves to talk in circles, debating the legitimacy of the word “sustainability” while the people who labor day in and day out in Kantamanto have been doing sustainability. Let’s prioritize Kantamanto’s work to create a Circular Economy, not that of the people who have benefited most from the linear economy. It bears repeating that Kantamanto is among the largest resale/reuse/recommerce/
Make less stuff, move money, and decentralize power. There can be no “sustainable innovation” without justice. Waste will either be the next frontier of colonialism and greenwashing or waste will serve as an opportunity for greater reckoning and reparation. Choose the latter.
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