Noi calculates that 100 tonnes of garments leave the market daily as waste. The city is able to collect and process just 30 tonnes of this.
“The remaining 70 tonnes end up in waste dumps, drains, lagoons, wetlands and the sea and other environmentally sensitive places,” Noi said.
SOARING OVER-CONSUMPTION
Fast fashion has upended the way we dress through rock-bottom prices, rapidly changing collections and aggressive social media marketing. People across the wealthy world are buying more clothes, and wearing them fewer times before discarding them. Brands used to have two main seasons a year; some fast fashion brands now release new “micro-seasons” every week. Globally, the production of clothing has doubled since 2000.
The climate toll is severe: on its current trajectory, by 2050 the fashion industry will represent more than a quarter of the world’s carbon budget, McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2025 report predicts.
People in the UK are Europe’s biggest consumers of fast fashion, buying an estimated 26.7kg of clothing each year – nearly double the amount bought by German consumers, who rank second.
This creates mountains of waste: in the UK, we discard around 1.5m tonnes of used textiles every year, leaving recycling systems struggling to cope. The Textiles Recyclers Association, a trade group, has warned that processing plants are reaching capacity and fast fashion oversupply is pushing the industry close to collapse. Many garments do not get recycled: an estimated 730,000 tonnes of textiles a year are incinerated or landfilled, often after being thrown away in household waste bins. Of the 650,000 tonnes sent to be reused and recycled, over two-thirds (420,000 tonnes) of these were exported, with Ghana receiving more as a final destination than any other country.
