Up to 15 million items of clothing end up every week at the world’s largest second-hand market, Kantamanto in Accra (Ghana). A figure enough to make anyone dizzy. But, in addition, to the high volume of clothing that Accra merchants have to give a second life to, in recent years there has been an added problem: the low quality of what arrives. «Years ago, clothes were an opportunity, but now almost 40% have to be thrown away for various reasons. You have to put buttons on them, they arrive without zippers, in a state that does not allow the garments to be reused or sold due to the high cost of repairs, ironing, washing, etc., necessary for the garment to be salable. There is too much and it is bad. We need to bet on an industry with higher quality clothing, which has more value for second-hand in Africa and allows the development of circular models on the continent,” says Liz Ricketts, co-founder of The Or Foundation, an organization that makes this complaint. These same clothes, in a country with a lack of waste management like Ghana, end up on the beaches and in the sea with the arrival of the monsoons. In fact, the foundation has 150 people who go to clean and remove clothes every day: more than 25 tons of clothes and plastic waste leave local beaches every week.
For this reason, the Kantamanto community – a creative center for reuse and repair, as defined by this foundation – wanted to take advantage of the Black Friday celebration to draw attention to a growing problem. They do it together with five other international organizations such as the Sustainable Spain Fashion Association (AES) and with an initiative called “Speak Volumes / Contar Esta de Moda”.
With this project they urge brands to share a simple and accessible piece of information: the number of garments they produce each year. «Before talking about solutions, the problem must be quantified, and currently it is not known how many garments are manufactured annually. We know that about 132 million tons of textile materials are put on the market, but we do not know the number of garments. And if we do not start talking to the consumer with terms they know (such as t-shirts or pants produced), we will not be able to make progress in responsible consumption. You have to speak to the consumer in a language they can understand so that they can make conscious decisions about their consumption,” says Gema Gómez, vice president of AMES.
In addition to the environmental issue, they remember the social consequences of this unbridled textile world and ask “What does Black Friday have to do with the arson in the Kantamanto market?” In January 2025, approximately 60% of the market was destroyed by fire and thousands of people lost their livelihoods. Every year, in periods like this, millions of low-quality garments are purchased that end up in second-hand markets in Africa,” they say from The Or Foundation. Gema Gómez adds: “Women who carry those heavy loads of up to 55 kilos on their heads every day suffer severe spinal problems.”
Conscious signatures
So far, powerful and well-known brands such as Mango or Ecoalf have joined, whose annual production exceeds one million garments, but many are missing, and “it is true that the majority are small firms that are much more aware of sustainability. If we talk about giants like Shein, there are studies that indicate that they put up to 5,000 million garments on the market each year; If we think that there are 8,000 million inhabitants in the world, we realize that it is crazy,” says Gómez.
Both organizations also ask for some type of intentional Extended Producer Responsibility system, because the current international ones are national, “80% of what is produced is exported, so they have no management,” they say.