The Green Illusion: How Sustainability Masks Empire
In the language of sustainability, “waste” becomes a loop. We tell ourselves we can close the circle, that nothing is lost forever. But what looks like a circle often turns into an open wound.
In Europe, clothing donation bins and charity shops speak of reuse and redemption. In Africa, these clothes arrive wrapped in hope—bales bound for markets—but the loop fractures somewhere along the way. Under the banner of the “circular economy,” we recycle the story of extraction.
More than 24 billion second-hand clothing items flow annually from high-income to lower-income countries, in a trade valued at over $4.9 billion.
Yet this trade is often framed as charity or environmentalism—even as it shifts environmental burdens onto places already overtaxed by extraction.
Fashion’s Disguised Debt
When these garments arrive in Africa, they are compressed into bales weighing ~45–55 kg and shipped inland via Mombasa, Mutukula, or Nakala, where traders purchase them by weight—rarely by quality. The Oversized myth of “six per container” collapses under real numbers: hundreds of such bales fit in a single container.
In Accra’s Kantamanto Market, studies indicate that about 40% of incoming apparel becomes waste—items that never reach a consumer.
These unsellables are dumped, burned, or washed into the Gulf of Guinea, contributing to pollution in waterways like the Korle Lagoon.
Meanwhile, the promise of a perfect circle obscures the real trajectory: from textile bins in affluent nations to landfills, waterways, and public health crises in the Global South.
Trade, Power, and Pushback
In the late 20th century, structural adjustment programs and trade liberalisation policies weakened local textile manufacturing across Africa. As imports flooded markets, local producers struggled to compete.
When the East African Community proposed phasing out second-hand imports in 2016, the bloc fragmented. Rwanda remained one of the few to follow through. In 2018, after Rwanda increased tariffs on used garments, the U.S. suspended its AGOA apparel benefits in response.
(These policy maneuvers reveal the tensions between sovereignty, trade power, and waste politics.)
Waste That Won’t Decay
Much of the unsellable clothing is synthetic—polyester, nylon, blends. These materials do not biodegrade readily and may persist for decades, shedding microplastics along the way.
In the waste streams around Kantamanto and other markets, these synthetics compound the environmental burden. The loop becomes a lingering scar.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLIE ENGMAN FOR ATMOS
Toward a Different Vision
If sustainability is not enough, then what?
We must demand circularity without colonial footprint: repair, upcycling, and local remanufacturing—under conditions that respect labour, sovereignty, and environmental justice.
Let us tell the stories the loop would erase—and centre the voices that transform waste into the future.
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