You may have read about Ghana’s Kantamanto fire at one of the world’s largest second-hand clothing markets earlier this month. 8,900 sales stalls were destroyed in Kantamanto, Ghana. 10,000 people were directly impacted in this market, where 15 million garments arrive per week. An estimated 25 million garments are recirculated through this market every month. There have been calls for support from global brands to help the market rebuild. An estimated $300 million is paid per year from Kantamanto small business owners to exporters, most of whom are in the Global North.
First, let’s acknowledge there is a functioning circular economy for fashion in the Global South. What can communities elsewhere learn from this? Second, if 15 million garments are coming into the market per week (so 60 million per month), and 25 million garments are re-circulated, this leaves me wondering about the other 60% of the imported product. The estimates of clothing that is deemed valueless by second-hand importers vary from 40 to 60%. How it is disposed of is a topic for another writing, but for this conversation let’s accept that its disposal has potential environmental and health impacts, especially since roughly 60% of clothing imported into the US each year (to eventually be baled and exported to markets like the one in Kantamanto) contains synthetic fibers that do not biodegrade.
Kantamanto is just one of several enormous markets throughout the Global South that have limited agency in whether they accept the imports and virtually no agency in influencing what is in the bales that they purchase.
About the overall system, I feel that the following three questions should be explored:
- Business owners in second-hand markets: What would you like to receive more of and less of? What makes up the delta of what you do not use? I have a guess that it is low-quality polyester clothing, cold-weather clothing, and cold-weather clothing in need of mending. We should be asking you these questions and listening to your answers.
- Global brands: What strategies do you have in place to reduce the percentage of deadstock with which you end up each season? On average, a successful global brand that expects to turn an acceptable profit and satisfy its shareholders and board consistently ends the season with 20 to 30% of the inventory it purchased unsold and remaining in its warehouse. This is the status quo today. Planning is extremely hard, and the pressure that planners and inventory management teams face to get it right is intense. However, software tools and change management opportunities do exist that can improve inventory accuracy. “Read and react” sourcing strategies, requiring competence and stakeholder collaboration, can further reduce unsold inventory. How can you be a stronger part of the solution?
- US-based companies who may have nothing to do with fashion: How can we profitably collect and recycle fossil fuel-based post-consumer textile waste domestically instead of exporting or landfilling it? There are many obstacles to this challenge, but whoever figures out how to capitalize on the immense abundance of this resource will have helped to repair the world and built a formidable new market.
Reader, are you personally responsible for this situation? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Not entirely. But do not underestimate your power and influence to disrupt the status quo. Regular consumers who are aware of the global problems we are talking about and who are hungry for agency, here is what you can do:
- Be deliberate about your consumption. If you need that garment and are going to wear it many many times for many seasons, go ahead and buy it. But maybe just one. And not in every color. The world’s overconsumption actually does start with the choices we make to buy something we don’t really need because we are out with friends, bored, sad, drunk, or overcaffeinated.
- Take good care of what you own. Repair it. Clean it properly. Hand it off to someone who you know will use it if you are done with it.
- Be a change-maker in your community. Organize a social event focused on clothing exchange, mending, or education. Set a goal to do one thing per quarter that matters. All of us have influence over our peers. Use it for good!
