Obroni Wawu - The Cost of Clothing
Obroni wawu. Dead white man’s clothes.
To the rest of the world, this Akan phrase refers to the piles of secondhand clothing surrounding the bustling city of Accra, Ghana. Each week, the Global North (predominantly the US, UK, and China) imports 15 million of these items into nations in the Global South. In the textile trading center of Kantamanto, ragged designer brands are given a new life amidst a sea of used clothing. But scattered scraps, torn sleeves, and ripped fabric are spreading away from the bustling marketplace. The ground is a glittering field of plastic threads and textile waste. Shorelines are a rainbow nightmare; piles upon piles of clothes form tattered beaches. Every day, disheartened foos (secondhand clothing sellers) toss 100 tons of unsellable garments. When children dive into formerly pristine waters, their soft skin is relentlessly scraped by plastic “fish”: scraps of hardened textiles that swim along the shore. Obroni wawu has become far more than a textile industry.
Click. Click. Click. Snip. Snip. Snip.
For many, the action of buying clothing is a plentiful rush of exhilaration, excitement, and wonder. In the world of online purchases, the jittery anticipation before eagerly unboxing is palpable. Once the package is opened, a flurry of steps ensue: fingertips gliding over fabric, eyes carefully scanning over the cloth for any imperfections, and gingerly trying on the garment. All of these meticulous steps are for that one wow – the moment you stare into a mirror and see yourself in that dazzling piece of clothing that had been clouding your dreams for weeks. Anticipation becomes imagination. The attention of others, the gasps and compliments. The silky feel of satin on your skin. The dress from that first date, a lucky tie that landed you an interview, a cozy wool sweater that always smelled of home—for a few months, or years perhaps, these irreplaceable wardrobe staples will weave into the fabric of memory.
One day, inevitably, tragically, the time comes when you outgrow your clothing. Mentally, with changing fashions and styles and decorations; physically, with changing bodies and proportions. It is undoubtedly a melancholy farewell. The loose threads that you’d picked during long classes have formed a semblance of comfort, of naivety, that you wish to hold onto for just another moment. As you see your clothing stacked neatly in a donation pile, you hope that the next owner will feel the warmth and joy that you received as well.
At the recycling center, volunteers meticulously sort through mountains of clothing. They sift through towering donation piles and separate them into a few groups: to be resold, exported, recycled, and disposed of. They carefully curate and select the items they deem worthy of a second life as store merchandise, a lucky 20% of clothing. The majority are placed into a state of limbo – unfit to resell locally, but a shame to throw away; the workers wrap them in bales and ship them to international ‘disposal sites’ like Ghana, Pakistan, and Chile. Within the pretense of a generous donation (these nations could use this clothing!) lies a systemic imbalance. The treatment of low-income nations as an informal disposal site reveals a dark legacy of colonialism; the uncouth people of such nations are thought to cherish the opportunity to sort through our trash. One man’s garbage is not always another man’s treasure. Sometimes, waste is simply waste.
Clothing ridden with holes and truly worn out is separated once again. Natural fibers (12% of these textiles) are recycled, while the rest (88%) end up in landfills or smokestacks. Most of the domestic secondhand clothing fills landfills or ascends as black smoke from incinerator pyres. But for the bales of clothing that travel internationally, they face the cycle once again.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
In Ghana, the action of buying clothing is a worrisome rush of trepidation, excitement, and destitution. Trash bags filled with an assortment of clothing line the counters. Brushing aside spaces on tables and floors, the contents are roughly dumped out. The air reeks of mothballs and mold. Foos (second-hand dealers) take a quick breath, mutter a hurried prayer, and rip open the bag. Once the clothing is uncovered, weathered hands tear through the fabric like a vulture through a carcass, pulling the fabric to assess quality. Eyes carefully scan over the bale for any decencies, shoving waste into the corner, all with the hope that resalable clothing would put food in children’s bellies. The overwhelming anticipation is similar to gambling. Many secondhand clothing dealers spend their life savings and fall into debt to purchase these clunps. Anticipation becomes yearning. The allure of valuable designer clothing, the possibility for change. The numbing feeling of relief and the warm rush of contentment.
If only the gambling stopped at the textile resellers. The waste clothing is compressed into a prism to be resold, at least on paper. Downstream, sellers sort through piles and piles of Bola (trash), seeking a miracle: that somehow, some way, a quality piece of clothing escaped unscathed through this long process into their hands. Workers from the central trading hubs ship these bales to the poorest slums, where the last swatches of passable fabric become mountains of trash. Textile shreds feed the fires, coat the air in ash, and form the houses that people reside in. As the waste breaks down into microplastics, they fill the bodies of fish on which local populations rely for survival. Obroni wawu lives within the people, environment, and society of the Ghanan people in Accra.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
There is one last stop for the textiles, one final ‘unboxing’. Ragged scraps of clothing make their way to the shores, covering the beaches and dancing in the tides. The ocean accepts all. Its waves lap against the shore, pulling lost fabrics into the lull of the sea.
In the past thirty years, this story has changed. With the rise of fast fashion, the Global North buys more and more clothing. Insatiable fashion shifts lead to the production of low-quality, cheap clothing that breaks after a few uses – just enough time for the next trend to emerge. 100 billion items of clothing were made this year for just 7 billion people. Donation centers are flooded with branded garbage, reducing the capacity of sorters to effectively separate waste from exports. As a result, textile resellers in regions like the Kantamanto market find bales upon bales filled with fast fashion rubbish. The people in the slums who bet their life savings on a bale only to find it filled with tattered junk fabric are rightfully enraged. With 92 million tons—1.5 Empire State Buildings’ worth— of clothing waste discarded each year, dumpsites like Ghana are smothered with secondhand waste. Textiles have accounted for 20% of global freshwater pollution and up to 35% of ocean microplastics. Fast-fashion culture has magnified the imbalance of gambling, disposal, and dumping between exporters and importers of used textiles.
Nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace Africa and the Or Foundation are pushing back. In October 2023, Greenpeace launched the Return to Sender campaign to promote resilience, amplify local voices, and demand social change. From Old Fadama, a massive dumpsite in Accra, market traders filled a dumpster with 19,000 pieces of discarded fabric. Greenpeace transported the heap to the Brandenburg Gate in Germany at the start of fashion week. The towering pile of textile waste delivered a bold message: Africa is not a dumping ground. The striking display drew global attention to the fashion industry’s waste crisis and the inequities in its disposal chain. Even from the fields of plastic textile waste, hope seems to spring new life. Despite the challenge, people are fighting back and finding new forms of expression, education, and hope. The heavy legacy of colonialism is a tragic reality, but not an immutable truth. So long as hopeful people continue to stand against systemic imbalance and oppression, the world will continue moving towards a brighter, more just future. Hope does not live in the heavy bales of compressed garbage after hours of relentless digging. It is in the hands of those who continue to dig each day, dreaming of a better world.
Written By Joey Wu
References:
Earth.Org. (n.d.). The 10 Essential Fast Fashion Statistics. Retrieved October 30, 2025, from https://earth.org/fast-fashion-statistics/
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