People in Kenya and other countries of the Global South are being overwhelmed by the growing flood of used and rejected clothes from wealthier countries, at volumes well beyond the needs and demands of local markets. Over the years they have become less and less useful; while the imported clothes used to be of good quality, now they are poorly made, or stained, broken and unusable. They are nothing less than plastic waste dumping, bringing a series of disasters – polluting waterways with microplastic fibres, catching on fire in the huge landfills and poisoning the air, or blocking the drains during downpours and aggravating flooding.
But fashion is no stranger to disaster. Ten years ago today, 1134 people died in the collapsed clothing factory Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. Considered the biggest modern catastrophe in the fashion industry, these people died making clothes for Western consumers.
This tragedy has come to symbolise the devastating impacts of fast fashion, not only on workers in supply chains but from the whole life cycle of fashion which exploits people and nature from the cradle to the grave. It led to the creation of Fashion Revolution, now the world’s largest fashion activism movement, which has the engagement of many non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Greenpeace.
Garment workers, most of whom are women (making up approximately 80% of the workforce in the garment industry) have been raising their voices and mobilising for years to ask for change, better working conditions, greater union rights and fair and living wages. Survivors of the Rana Plaza collapse are also speaking out and calling out brands that haven’t contributed to compensation or changed their business practices.