00:00At Agbog Bloshi, a vast rubbish site in Ghana's capital, Accra, workers and nearby residents
00:06breathe smoke from burning plastic, electronics and other waste.
00:10A government cleanup is now removing about 1 million tons of waste.
00:14Officials say they aim to bring informal workers into formal recycling
00:18and create up to 20,000 permanent jobs in waste management and the circular economy.
00:23So for example, the waste cyclists may mainly be exposed to chemical toxic substances
00:29like all the heavy metals you can talk about.
00:32Then when you talk about assortes, they can be exposed to fecal matter.
00:38They can be exposed to some aerosols.
00:42And then they can also experience, it's very serious among them,
00:45they can also experience sharp injuries due to needles and other things in the waste.
00:52The dump is part of a global waste pipeline.
00:54Greenpeace estimates Ghana received 15 million used garments every week
00:59with around half of the clothing left unsold and discarded or burnt.
01:04Old electronics are also dismantled by hand, releasing toxic fumes.
01:08We conducted an investigation in 2023 and had published a report in 2024.
01:15And some of the findings are that there's a lot of textile waste that comes into Ghana.
01:20We are talking about, you know, 15 million articles of clothing coming to Ghana every week.
01:26And out of that, we realized that some of them will be transported to other markets,
01:31but most of that will remain at Cantamanto.
01:34And the traders we spoke to alluded to the fact that between 40 and 50 percent of that is usually
01:39textile waste.
01:41Workers and people living nearby report coughing and other health problems.
01:47Across a huge second-hand clothing market has imports from Europe, North America and Asia,
01:53but often with a troubling by-product.
01:56And so they have found that opportunity to actually transfer that responsibility to, you know,
02:03the Ghanaian or the government of Ghana,
02:05which does not have the infrastructure to deal with such kind of waste.
02:10And so our plea is that the fast fashion brand should, you know, stop over-consumption and over-production
02:16and should also stop, you know, turning Ghana into really a dump site because this is what it is.
02:23Experts warn that pollution can contaminate the lagoons, soil and food chain,
02:28though specific diseases have not yet been directly linked to the site.
02:33So, you know, we're not going to be able to do that.
