Environment: how our old clothes pollute Ghana

Une partie non négligeable des vêtements usagés en Occident finissent sur les plages et dans les mers de pays d'Afrique. Au Ghana, on ne sait plus quoi faire de ces vieilles fripes.

The waves of the Atlantic Ocean rejected them inexorably on the beaches, where they pile up on hundreds of meters.Thousands of clothes worn in the West end on the sides of Ghana and even in the center of Accra, the capital.An artificial dune, twenty meters high today, has been growing for fifteen years."We are burning the clothes, again and again, but there are always more.It makes us sick, "said one of them.These fumes are probably toxic, even if no study has been carried out.

Narrowed lifetime

Every day, 160 tonnes of clothes arrive in Ghana, which no one wants in Western countries.A whole economy has developed around these clothes.But very few can be used.Over 70 tonnes of fabric per day end up at the discharge, an ecological disaster.Liz Ricketts founded an NGO to understand the impact of textile pollution."It will take years for clothing to deteriorate, and during this time, harmful and toxic microfibers are released in the environment," explains the founder of The Or Foundation.Brands and consumers are responsible according to this former New York stylist who calls for a change in consumption, while the lifespan of a garment continues to shorten.At least one in eight t-shirt ends in an African discharge.