Clothing Donations From U.S. Destroy Beautiful Beaches Overseas

Many Americans donate their used clothing to charities or thrift stores when they no longer need it, thinking that it will find a new home with someone who needs it. But little do they know, millions of pounds of clothes are put into bales and shipped to other countries in what is known as the “salvage market.”

Cheap, low-quality clothes are produced quickly to respond to changing trends – referred to as “fast fashion” – and discarded after only a few wears.

Every week, nearly 15 million articles of clothing end up in Ghana’s capital, Accra, where traders then try to re-sell the bales to make a profit. While some of the clothes can be repurposed, many are not good quality and end up in the garbage.

Sadly, the clothes that are considered garbage get washed onto beaches or overwhelm landfills. According to CBS News, 40 percent of all the clothing bales sent to Ghana end up in these landfills.

According to ABC News, global production of clothing has doubled since 2000, and we are buying 60 percent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago, but only keeping them for half as long.

Mountains of these old clothes are covering Ghana’s beautiful beaches, causing an environmental burden. The clothes that make it out to sea float in the ocean, entangle with plastic waste and wash back onshore. Heavier items sink to the ocean floor.

In addition to landfills and beaches, storms also wash the clothing into a network of open sewers, which chokes the drainage system and promotes flooding.

Solomon Noi, the director of waste management for the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, is not happy with the United States and other countries that these clothes are coming from.

“It is totally a disservice to us in this part of the world because we have become sort of the
dumping ground for the textile waste that is produced from Europe, from the Americas,” he told ABC News.

The increasing number of poor-quality clothes arriving at these markets is a major driver of Ghana’s waste crisis. Another is the extensive volume of clothing being manufactured around the world.

Noi is pleading with people to think twice about where their donated clothes end up.

“If they come here, like you’ve come, and you see the practicality for yourself, then they will
know that, no, we better take care of these things within our country and not to ship that
problem to cause problems to other people.”