Jamestown Beach in Accra is where a lot of fast fashion ends up after someone throws it away. The polyester and other plastics used to make these clothes take forever to break down and when thrown into the trash, they don’t end up in landfills where they were purchased, the trash gets shipped off to some poor country whose residents have to deal with clean up.
The residents of Accra took to TikTok to show just how much fast fashion ends up on their beaches, washing in from the ocean everyday. Nothing can be done with this clothing besides being cleaned and resold, which is exactly what happens. People comb through thousands of pounds of clothes, clean it, and resell it to whoever lives locally. This is kind of sustainable, but the sheer volume of clothing that ends up on the beach and at these stands far surpasses the amount of clothing being sold back into the community. Not to mention, these items are cheaply manufactured and not made to last, so a lot of the trash is just that, trash.
People used to be able to swim in the water and walk along the beach in Jamestown. Now, you can’t take two steps without stepping on an item of clothing. If more people saw where their clothes ended up after throwing it away, they may be deterred from purchasing so many items just to discard them.
