Five-fold rise in clothing purchases by Americans over the last three decades has led to more garments being shipped to Ghana than ever, as per a CBS report. Many Americans donate their used clothing under the assumption that it will be reused. But with increasing amount of items being discarded, and the poorer quality of fast fashion, millions of garments are put into bales and shipped abroad every year, says Liz Ricketts, Co-founder and Director, OR Foundation.

Most of these clothes are shipped to Ghana's Kamanto market where around 15 million items of used clothing from Western countries arrive every week. The entire population of Ghana is only 30 million. Trucks offload bales of textiles — called Obroni Wawu, or ‘Dead White Man's Clothes’ — arrive at the market, which is a seven-acre maze of over 5,000 stalls. The bales are purchased by market traders — who do not know ahead of time what's in them — for between $25 and $500 each they then clean, tailor, and re-dye what they can of the clothing to give it new life.

Upcycling these clothes is difficult because of the poor quality of fast fashion garments, says Samuel Oteng, Project Manager, OR Foundation. Ultimately, they end up in landfills, he adds. The upcycling work of traders at Katamanto is not enough to reduce the glut of clothing created by America's addiction to fast fashion. It is estimated that 40 percent of all the clothing bales sent to Ghana end up in landfills.