Given the vast quantities of clothing they produce, the rise of ultra fast fashion brands in recent years is clearly at odds with the current sustainability push taking place in the industry. So, when non-profit The OR Foundation announced at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen that it was receiving $15 million (£12 million) from Shein in order to tackle the enormous clothing waste problem at the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, the response was mixed, to say the least.
The grant, comprising $5 million (£4 million) a year for three years, is part of Shein’s larger extended producer responsibility fund to help manage textiles waste, amounting to $50 million (£40 million) over five years. For critics, the initiative is an extreme example of greenwashing, allowing Shein (which was recently valued at $100 billion, or £80 billion) to continue with business as usual while paying lip service to the need to address its environmental impact. “Apparently money can buy anything,” Livia Firth, founder of Eco-Age, wrote on Instagram following the announcement. “Partnering with Shein is actually like a stab in the back of the sustainable fashion advocacy and takes us back years.”
For The OR Foundation’s co-founder Liz Ricketts, though, the money represents a lifeline for the community in Kantamanto – the biggest second-hand fashion market in west Africa – that the organisation has been supporting for the past 12 years. “We’re accountable not to the sustainability community in the Global North; we are accountable to the Kantamanto community that has trusted us for years,” Ricketts tells Vogue. “[Imagine] if we told the community that we could finally get resources to do some of the things they’ve been saying they want to do, and we turned it down because we were afraid of Instagram comments.”
Each week, a shocking 15 million garments arrive at Kantamanto Market from countries in the Global North, decimating the local textiles industry there. In order to transport the huge bales of clothing waste, young women and girls, known as kayayei, are paid as little as $3 (£2.40) a day to carry them on their heads – risking their lives to do so. “They carry the bales, [which weigh] their entire body weight, sometimes a kilometre or more,” a visibly emotional Ricketts says. “If they do it for a while, and they turn their head the wrong way, their neck breaks, and they die. Three years ago, I met a kayayoo who was walking upstairs with a bale on her head [when she] wobbled and [the bale] fell backwards and crushed her baby.”
Given the stark everyday realities of those working at Kantamanto, The OR Foundation will use the grant from Shein to help transition the kayayei into safer and more secure jobs. “It costs $1,000 (£800) tor us to transition a kayayoo into an apprenticeship,” Ricketts explains. “The first thing we’re going to do is take all 100 girls [we’re working with] out [of being a kayayoo]. Some of the girls work with us in our No More Fast Fashion lab to upcycle textile waste, but they’re also placed with other entrepreneurs in town. We’re also really focused on supporting young women to go into lines of work that typically are reserved for men, like plumbing, electrics, carpentry.”
The money will also go towards local initiatives to tackle textile waste. “Of course, people who are dealing directly with this problem have ideas for how to solve it,” she continues. “It’s something as simple as closing the gap between online re-sellers and the retailers in Kantamanto, or getting an ozone chamber to help people clean the clothes. We’re also doing a fibre-to-fibre recycling pilot with a Ghanaian textile manufacturer.”
Despite the controversy over Shein’s involvement, it’s clear what a difference the $15 million grant will make for the Kantamanto community. “We’ve been in conversations with other folks in this space about trying to find funding for the girls we work with,” Ricketts says. “Adam [Whinston, global head of ESG at Shein] was the first person I’ve talked to from any brand who’s said, ‘Okay, I hear you. We’re acknowledging the fact that our clothing may be ending up in Kantamanto. You’re saying what would be helpful is that we distribute money – essentially, we’re paying a fee for waste.”
Whether Shein will actually go on to tackle the root cause of the issue remains to be seen. “Shein’s small batch production model results in less waste to begin with, a model which would yield an immediate drop in global textile production of 20 per cent, if adopted by the rest of the industry,” Whinston says via email. Given that Shein adds around 6,000 new styles to its website every day, that’s still an extraordinary amount of clothes that are being produced.
Whinston also claims that more consumer education is needed to keep clothes in circulation for longer, despite long-standing criticism around the durability of fast fashion. “There is much we can do to educate and provide channels for consumers to give their clothing a longer life,” he continues. “I look forward to upcoming announcements that will demonstrate the holistic and aggressive approach we’ve set out to address this important issue.”
Despite the scepticism around how serious Shein is about tackling fashion’s waste problem, its new fund raises wider questions over who should pay for the devastating impact of the industry – which hits countries in the Global South the hardest. “We don’t yet have the legal framework to hold people accountable,” Ricketts says. “If Shein is willing to say that they do play a role in this and give money to clean it up – I don’t know who else should pay.”
Until fast fashion brands actually address the issue of overproduction in the first place, brands taking financial responsibility for the waste they’re creating is arguably the next best option. “I hope that other brands will be inspired to make similar commitments,” Ricketts concludes. “Let’s empower [local communities] as much as we can.”
