NOVEMBER: AFRICAN COTTON
BENIN AND BANGLADESH
Bangladeshi cotton traders are busy in November because their second largest source of cotton is about to finish harvest. Benin, Africa's leading cotton producer, is home to hundreds of thousands of smallholder cotton farmers (figure 1). With little infrastructure to process cotton in the country, Benin annually exports around 400 million dollars worth of cotton to Bangladesh- the world’s largest garments exporter after China.
Benin and Bangladesh are perfect partners in an industry that chases poverty. Both countries have huge workforces focused on growing and making clothing- the cotton industry employs 30% of Benin’s workforce and the garment sector employs 40% of Bangladesh’s. They also have some of the world’s lowest wages. Bangladesh just raised the minimum wage for garment workers to $113/ month, around $0.01-$0.10/ garment depending on difficulty.Â
Figure 1: Farmers in Benin who recently transitioned from conventional to organic methods sitting on their harvest. A recent survey found that 52% of conventional cotton farmers in Benin had experienced symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning. Source
Before colonization, cotton was a secondary crop in Benin’s diverse farm fields, processed for home and spiritual uses. Farmers started growing cotton commercially when Benin was a French colony. France wanted to ensure consistent access to cotton after the US Civil War created unpredictable prices and access. It imported upland cotton seeds, incentivized and coerced farmers to plant them, set up companies to gin and sell lint, arranged free-trade agreements for fiber exports, and prohibited locals from buying cotton to process and sell in-country.Â
After gaining independence, Benin’s cotton sector underwent several reforms. Although numerous public and private companies have controlled the industry with varying levels of success, all had one focus: exporting cotton lint. A remnant of its colonized past, Benin’s cotton rarely is for Benin’s clothing, at least for new garments. Many garments made with cotton grown in Benin, processed and sewn in Bangladesh, and sold in North America or Europe make their way back to Benin or its neighbors in West Africa.Â
EXCESS OF EXCESS
Every day, millions of dollars worth of used clothing travel from the global north to the global south. The US, Europe, and China are the main sources of used clothing. Only 10-30% of that clothing donated to thrift stores, charities, parking lot donation bins, and brands’ take-back programs is resold in-country. The rest move through a vast sorting system that takes them on a global journey. That is how a garment with Benin’s cotton ends up in Benin- at least two laps around the globe, exchanging hundreds of hands.
The global second-hand clothing trade is complex, often unregulated, and lacks transparency. The basic journey starts with rag traders- companies that aggregate, sort, and sell used clothing. First, they pick out high-value items, designer goods, trendy vintage, and collectibles and sell them to vintage buyers all over the world. Although this makes up a tiny percentage of clothing donated, it is often the bulk of their profits. Clothing that is not high-value but deemed sellable domestically ends up in thrift stores. The rest is either downcycled, thrown away, incinerated, or exported to foreign second-hand markets (figure 2).Â
Figure 2: Examples of where used clothing goes. 1) A warehouse full of high-value vintage denim, 2) A thrift store, 3) A truck full of bales for export 4) A landfill
The second-hand clothing for export is sorted into rough categories (men’s suits, children's shoes, women’s tops, etc.), graded based on quality, baled, packed into containers, and shipped by boat to the far corners of the globe. Where each bale goes, depends on its destination. For example, winter coats go to Eastern Europe, not Africa.
Accra, Ghana is home to Kantamanto, the largest second-hand clothes market in West Africa. 15 million garments move through Kantamanto weekly. Every Monday and Thursday, containers arrive at the nearby Port of ​​Tema filled with bales of used clothing. Trucks drive the bales to the market where importers sort and sell them to traders for anywhere from $75-$500 based on grade and origin.Â
Some bales go straight to one of Kantamanto’s 5,000 market stalls. The open-air market is carpeted in clothing, packed with wooden stalls, and covered with a patchwork of tin roofs (figure 3). Kayayei, female porters, balance the 120 lb bales on their heads and navigate the uneven pavement and narrow passageways delivering them from the importers to the sellers in the market. At their stall, sellers open their bales and begin yet another sorting process- they sell some of the goods, send some to tailors to reconfigure or repair, pay for some to be picked up by bola boys (private waste collectors), or simply discard some in the aisles and gutters.Â
Figure 3: Women sorting through bales in their stall. source
Sellers deem as much as 40% of clothing coming into Kantamanto market as unsellable, creating a quantity of waste so epic that proper management of it is far from a reality in Ghana. Some waste goes to official landfills, most of which are already overflowing and leaching into nearby waterways and ecosystems. The rest either go to unofficial landfills, are incinerated near Kantamanto, or are dumped in the ocean or beaches.Â
Clothing made with natural fibers can decompose within a few weeks in ideal conditions- exposure to oxygen, heat, and microbes. Packed landfills in Ghana are devoid of oxygen and circulation, making decomposition much slower. Synthetic fibers (52% of clothing produced), synthetic dyes and finishers, and polyester threads take 200 or more years to break down completely. They remain in landfills, releasing microfibers and chemical pollutants into the surrounding ecosystem. The unwanted clothing piles will continue accumulating in Ghana with little to no decomposition.Â
The alternative, incineration, means every part of the garment is released into the airways— the carbon that plants and animals sequestered to create fiber, the carbon from oil used to make polyester and petro-chemical dyes, and the various chemicals used to dye, soften, wash, and bleach clothing.Â
Figure 4: A beach in Accra covered in clothing waste.
The bales that don’t make it into the stalls at Kantamanto or Accra’s lands, waterways, and airways go to other West African countries, including Benin. Once in Benin, a similar story of markets full of clothing and poor waste management occurs.Â
ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE
The second-hand trade supply chain has the upside of bringing affordable clothing to communities that may not be able to afford clothing otherwise and elongating the lifespan of a garment. But the dose makes the poison. With annual global production of 80 and 150 billion garments to dress 8 billion people, the amount of excess clothing in circulation is lethal.
Figure 5: A West African cotton farmer carrying cotton for export and a Kayayei carrying used clothing for import. source and source.
The story of cotton in Africa is a positive feedback loop (Figure 5). The clothing industry incentivizes growing cotton in countries with low wages, using crude and chemically-intensive farming methods. The resulting cheap raw material reduces the cost of the final product. The low-cost products have a lower perceived value from customers, fostering excessive consumption and easy donation after a few wears. That donated excess then returns to the countries where wages are so low that there is a high demand for cheap, second-hand clothing. With that excess of economically affordable clothing comes the costs of managing the world’s massive amount of unwanted clothing waste. The cycle continues and the waste accumulates.
NOTES
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/ben
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bgd?yearlyTradeFlowSelector=flow1
https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-garment-workers-wage-increase-5d55f9ba52ef2a156069e86dad665662
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.926350/full
https://theordev2.s3.amazonaws.com/2023-01/Waste%20Landscape%20Report%20-%20Compressed.pdf
https://www.gq.com/story/oliver-franklin-wallis-wasteland-excerpt
https://atmos.earth/kantamanto-market-ghana-clothing-waste-women/
https://issuu.com/fashionrevolution/docs/fr_zine2_rgb