Oxfam cast-offs wash up as rubbish in Ghana
Donations rejected by UK charity shops go unsold in African nation’s markets and end up as landfill or in the ocean
CLOTHES donated to Oxfam are ending up in landfill in Ghana despite its pledge that “zero per cent” of charity shop donations will end up in landfill, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found.
Despite the promise, its exported clothing is flooding markets abroad.
In Kantamanto market in centre of the capital Accra, The Telegraph witnessed a seller sorting Oxfam labelled clothes, some of which were put into a low-value pile on her stall. These are items that were unlikely to sell – and destined to be sent to landfill or dumped in one of the city’s unregistered waste sites.
Last night, Oxfam said it was suspending exports to Ghana while it investigated the findings.
The Or Foundation, a charity working in the city, has frequently seen clothes with the charity’s tags in its audits of discarded clothes waiting to be picked up by waste collectors, and in Accra’s toxic, overflowing landfill sites.
On its website page for donors, Oxfam says its clothes “never” end up in landfill. Nowhere does it mention the likelihood that unsold clothes or clothing donations not suitable for reselling in the UK will be exported.
Data suggest an estimated 70 per cent of all UK second-hand clothing ends up abroad, often in countries like Ghana where no large-scale textile recycling takes place. There, a properly managed landfill is the best-case scenario – other items end up clogging drains, being burned or dumped in the ocean.
In Kantamanto, The Telegraph also found tags from the Red Cross, Sense and Mind.
Britain’s fast-fashion habit makes it the world’s third-largest exporter of second-hand clothes, behind the USA and China, according to data collected by the Observatory of Economic Complexity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Millions of items are donated to charity shops or put into textile “recycling” bins every year, which is seen as a guiltfree way to dispose of clothes.
Charities have partnerships with forprofit companies known as textile recyclers, which buy the clothing they cannot sell in their shops, sort it and ship some of it to countries including Ghana.
The findings lay bare the toll this mountain of used clothing takes on developing countries, where the waste collection and management systems are struggling to cope.
Ghana is the largest importer. Some 15million garments flood into the country every week. Most of it goes initially to Kantamanto: The Or Foundation estimates that 40 per cent of what arrives in the market leaves as waste.
Market traders told us they frequently can’t sell clothing because it is poor quality, damaged or unsuitable.
Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation, which monitors the textile market and waste stream, said: “I’ve never not found an Oxfam tag in the waste. But Oxfam isn’t exporting it, and they don’t want their stuff to end up there. I don’t think the average person has any idea that the recycling bin is not recycling or that it’s a for-profit business.”
Clothing from Kantamanto is “the single largest consolidated waste stream in the entire city of Accra, possibly in all of Ghana”, a report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change said last year, based on Or Foundation research.
At nearby Jamestown beach, fishermen sometimes drag in nets full of clothes, rather than fish, and a vast tangle of fabric is buried in the sand. Common brands include Marks & Spencer, Next, Lacoste, Nike and Converse.
Joseph Ayesu, who manages The Or Foundation’s beach monitoring programme, says some of the waste makes its way to the beach via drains, but sometimes waste managers dump it directly into the sea. “The rate at which it comes into the country is an issue,” he said.
A spokesman for the Charity Commission said: “We are assessing the information to determine whether this is a matter for the commission.”
A spokesman for Oxfam said: “Oxfam does its best to ensure that as few donated textiles as possible end up in landfill or waste, and we are sorry that the process appears to have fallen short in this case. We have suspended exports to Ghana whilst we investigate.
“We carry out environmental and ethical checks on the third parties we work with, and are committed to ensuring that the donated textiles are exported in a way which aligns with Oxfam’s values and minimises the impact on human rights, local economies and the environment. We are reaching out to The Or Foundation in Ghana to discuss how we can work together to reduce the risk of clothing ending up as waste.”
A spokesman for the British Red Cross said: “We work hard to accept and sell as many donated items as possible to ensure we reduce waste. We give donations every opportunity to sell, regularly rotating stock to other locations, and using online marketplaces.”
A spokesman for Sense said: “We make every effort to sell all donations, but do not have the capacity to hold on to unsold items for an unlimited time … we utilise textile recyclers, approved and recommended by the Charity Retail Association as ethical providers, in an effort to prolong the life of goods rather than them being diverted to landfill.”
A spokesman for Mind said that “occasionally” when items do not sell “we work with a reputable textile recycling company in the UK to ethically manage these items and do not sell textiles from Mind shops directly to Ghana.
Dawn Dungate, of the UK trade membership group the Textile Recycling Association, said poor quality clothing did not come from its members.
“Shipping ‘waste’ not only goes against our member companies’ commitment to sustainability, it is also simply not cost-effective,” she said.
“Other used clothing goes into making mattresses and duvets, for example, or for car upholstery and insulation and not into African re-use markets.”
‘I don’t think the average person has any idea that the recycling bin is not recycling or that it’s a for-profit business’