Is fast fashion creating a textile waste crisis?

Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.

Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for the harmful textile imports and what can be done to alleviate the problem.

 Sam Quashie-Idun is Head of Investigations at Greenpeace Africa and a member of Land and Climate Review's investigations unit.

You can read the report here and watch Sam’s Instagram video summarising its findings here.

Further reading: 

• Poisoned Gifts, Greenpeace, 2023
• How to Ensure Waste Colonialism is Not Written Into Law and That Fashion’s Biggest Polluters Have to Change, The Or Foundation, 2023
• ‘‘It’s like a death pit’: how Ghana became fast fashion’s dumping ground’, The Guardian, 2023
• ‘European secondary textile sector ‘on the brink of collapse’’, Recycling International, 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.