This article is part of our ‘(Re)Made in Ghana’ series, which looks at what one of the world’s largest circular fashion ecosystems—Kantamanto Market—can teach us about fashion’s future. You can read our other series on ‘Made in Italy’, ‘Made in India’, and ‘Made in the UK’ through the provided links.
In many places, secondhand fashion is thriving. The peer-to-peer platform Vinted is now France’s largest retailer by sales volume, according to the French Fashion Institute. eBay is a regular presence during fashion month, generating over 2.3 billion listings in 2024 from 1.3 million active buyers. The RealReal reported an adjusted EBITDA of $9.3 million for 2024, having turned profitable for the first time in late 2023. In the US, a third of all clothing purchased last year was secondhand, creating an estimated $56 billion market, according to Capital One Shopping.
For advocates of a circular fashion system, this looks like progress. But is it really?
Many of these platforms aim to keep clothes in use longer, preventing them from ending up in landfills at home or abroad. It’s a goal that resonates with consumers as awareness of textile waste grows. On social media, distressing images from places like Accra’s clogged beaches, Cairo’s “Garbage City,” or Chile’s Atacama Desert—where waste piles are visible from space—motivate people to shop secondhand.
Ebay Endless Runway during New York Fashion Week, 2025. Photo: John Nacion/ Getty Images
However, secondhand retailers in circular fashion hubs across the Global South report an unintended consequence of the resale boom in wealthy nations: the highest-quality used clothing is now captured earlier in the chain. What eventually trickles down through charity shops is often unsellable, arriving as near-waste. This undermines local recirculation efforts and accelerates the waste crisis.
“In blunt terms, the Global South is a dumping ground for the Global North,” says Andrew Rough, CEO of the Scottish circular fashion hub ACS, which manages reverse logistics for over 30 brands. After visiting Ghana’s Kantamanto Market—which receives about 15 million used items weekly from the Global North—Rough witnessed the environmental and social damage caused by these imports.
These trade routes have existed for decades, but the resale boom and the rise of fast and ultra-fast fashion have pushed the system to a breaking point. Markets are flooded with low-quality clothing, intensifying competition for the best pieces and creating crises throughout the supply chain. For about 18 months, textile recycling associations in the Global North—which primarily collect, sort, and export rather than physically recycle—have warned of collapsing profits. Several major players have entered administration or are buckling under warehouses full of low-value clothing with no clear destination.
Read More: Fashion’s textile recycling problem? It doesn’t exist
The knock-on effect is that secondhand retailers in places like Kantamanto Market are no longer able to…People are trapped in cycles of debt, struggling to make ends meet while dealing with the environmental and health impacts of living surrounded by useless textile waste. “It makes sense that communities like Kantamanto would face this crisis first, but now collectors, sorters, and exporters in the Global North are experiencing it too,” says Liz Ricketts, co-founder of The Or Foundation, a Ghanaian American non-profit working in and around Kantamanto Market.
She adds that global solidarity and a worldwide perspective on the secondhand clothing trade are the only way forward. “It’s frustrating. Why couldn’t they see that Kantamanto was a warning sign for a much larger collapse and work with us? We could have made so much more progress by now.”
The Problem of Sorting Without Local Knowledge
In the Global North, secondhand clothing usually goes to charities or thrift shops first. However, most donated items that don’t sell are passed on to textile recycling companies. These clothes are then exported based on their condition. The best items, or “first selection,” are sent to Eastern Europe, while the rest—often controversially labeled as “exotique” or “Africa grade”—are sent to the Global South.
In May 2025, The Or Foundation partnered with the British outdoor brand Finisterre in London to highlight the unfairness and inefficiency of this system. Attendees, including myself, were split into groups and asked to sort secondhand clothing that The Or Foundation had brought from Ghana. These items were packed in a “baby bale,” meant to represent the real 55-kilogram bales exported from the Global North every day.
We were given four categories, developed by The Or Foundation through years of working with secondhand retailers:
– First selection: On-trend, like-new clothing in sizes suitable for the Ghanaian market, with durable seams, no stains or tears, and made from preferred materials like cotton.
– Second selection: Clothing in relevant styles and sizes with clear signs of wear but no major damage.
– Third selection: Heavily worn items needing washing, ironing, repairs, dyeing, resizing, or remanufacturing to be sellable, or clothes made from fabrics unsuitable for Ghana’s hot climate (often above 32°C).
– Fourth selection (asei): Essentially waste—clothing stained, torn, or damaged beyond repair.
After we sorted the clothes, retailers from Kantamanto Market—who had traveled with The Or Foundation to raise awareness about the textile waste crisis—pointed out the mistakes in our grading. Almost every item needed to be downgraded by at least one category, sometimes two. While we had spent nearly half an hour deliberating, the retailers assessed each piece in seconds.
In reality, only 18% of each bale sent to Ghana is considered first selection, even though many retailers pay high prices (up to $700 per bale) for what they expect to be top quality. According to The Or Foundation, most of the bale is second selection (30%) or third selection (46%), while 6% is waste.
These numbers are disputed by sorting, export, and import associations involved in the global bale trade, who claim the proportion of waste is lower. However, The Or Foundation argues that context matters—it’s not an exact science, and the exact figures are almost beside the point. The demonstration highlighted the importance of local expertise in sorting secondhand clothing. If this knowledge had been used from the beginning, many of these clothes might never have been shipped to a country that has no use for them.For them, there is no knowledge of what will sell or be desirable in the countries of the Global South, nor the infrastructure to handle the large volumes considered waste. Yet, this is precisely how the global secondhand clothing industry functions: textiles are sorted in the Global North by people with limited understanding of what will be marketable in the Global South countries where they are ultimately sold.
“People in Kantamanto Market can only buy what people in the Global North donate or throw away. Retailers can’t go online and choose what to buy based on what their customers will like. They don’t even get to see what’s inside the bale before purchasing it,” explains Ricketts, who has been bringing groups of retailers to the Global North for years in hopes of fostering closer collaboration with sorters and exporters.
Secondhand retailers at Kantamanto Market open new bales of used clothing—exported from the Global North—multiple times a week, hoping to make a profit. The overwhelming volume of low-quality items is making this increasingly difficult.
“[Creating more opportunities for global solidarity and collaboration] could open up a new level of dialogue, where retailers from Kantamanto can advise sorters on what they actually want. Sorters could explain how they operate, their working conditions, and why they might occasionally miss a stain or tear. It would be a more human conversation.”
The Fight for First Selection
The sorting model was already flawed, but the rise of fast fashion—and brands shifting toward fast fashion in terms of quality and business model—has magnified existing challenges and sparked a global competition for first selection that is reaching a critical point. “There’s simply less high-quality clothing available,” says Ricketts. She estimates that only 10% of new clothing produced is of high enough quality for secondhand retailers to profit from reselling it. This means good fabrics, preferably natural materials, strong seams, durable construction, and timeless designs. “With so many secondhand platforms emerging in the Global North, that 10% now has to be shared among more players.”
Dounia Wone, chief impact officer at the luxury resale site Vestiaire Collective, agrees that the supply of good-quality secondhand clothing is rapidly shrinking. Where people once donated quality items to charities, they are now more likely to try to sell them, even for a small amount.
As a result, charities are flooded with low-value items that cost more to process than they can be sold for, while being cut off from the high-quality goods that could actually generate revenue. Communities like Kantamanto Market feel this even more acutely due to their position at the very end of the linear value chain. “So many of us feel good about ourselves when we donate clothes to charity, but we have no idea that charity shops can’t handle our waste,” says Rough. “Actually seeing clothing in Ghana with UK charity shop tags and prices was really striking. We think we’re doing a good thing, but we’re not.”
Rough continues that it’s already difficult enough for secondhand platforms in the Global North to turn a profit, due to the high costs of running online resale businesses. Brands looking to enter the secondhand market face similar barriers.
The recirculation service offered by ACS varies by brand but can include cleaning, repairing, or remanufacturing. “That comes at a cost,” says Rough. “Our team has to sort through boxes, grade clothing based on condition, clean and repair each item, photograph it, store it, pack it, and ship it. There are many steps involved, and the process is still quite manual.” In general, clothing can…According to Rough, resold items typically fetch about half their original retail price. Given the effort involved in recirculation, the absolute minimum retail price needed to make resale economically viable is around £40, but that is “really scraping the barrel.” For ACS to earn a decent profit, the retail price should ideally be closer to £100 or more, which excludes most fast fashion.
In contrast, retailers in Kantamanto Market operate on much tighter margins, despite offering a similar service. After a devastating fire destroyed most of the market in January 2025, The Or Foundation conducted a census, with results to be published soon. An early finding, Ricketts notes, is that bale prices have risen since the fire. This means most retailers buying bales from the Global North would need to charge at least $3 per item just to break even. However, the proportion of high-quality “first selection” items in bales is now so low—even when retailers pay extra for better-quality bales—that most sellers need to price each first selection item closer to $5 to cover losses. This is a significant challenge in one of Africa’s most expensive cities, where the daily minimum wage can be as low as $2.
“That obviously presents huge challenges for retailers, which is why we’re asking charities and resale platforms in the Global North to disclose their operating cost per garment,” Ricketts adds. She hopes that opening a global conversation about operating costs in the secondhand market will foster solidarity and highlight the value that ecosystems like Kantamanto add by recirculating as much clothing as possible. So far, responses have been limited, and those who have disclosed information have done so off the record.
There is no easy solution. As Wone points out, addressing global power imbalances in post-colonial trade routes is “far beyond” the scope of most fashion companies. Simply stopping the flow of secondhand goods isn’t the answer either, as these ecosystems depend on imports for business.
Some Kantamanto Market sellers suggest that people in the Global North should send low-quality items directly to local landfills instead of passing the problem to the Global South, while donating higher-quality items rather than selling them. This would give businesses further down the chain a better chance at accessing first selection items. Others propose amending upcoming extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws so that funds collected from producers can be redistributed to countries actually dealing with fashion’s waste crisis—though this is a distant prospect.
“It’s going to take significant investment in infrastructure, along with finding new ways for retailers to sell to recyclers or new markets for upcycled products, so they can make a living,” says Ricketts. “Whatever the solution looks like, we need solidarity between the Global North and the Global South. Companies in the Global North must move beyond fear and accept the reality everyone in this business faces: high volumes of low-quality clothing.”
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs The Resale Boom and the Waste Problem
Beginner Questions
What is the resale boom
The resale boom refers to the rapid growth of the secondhand market including thrift stores online platforms like Depop and Poshmark and clothing rental services Its driven by a desire for sustainability unique finds and affordability
If resale is so popular why do we still have a waste problem
Because the resale market is still just a fraction of the overall fashion and goods industry Fast fashion and new product manufacturing are producing items at a much faster rate than the secondhand market can absorb A lot of lowquality unwearable or unsellable items still end up as waste
Isnt buying secondhand automatically sustainable
Its more sustainable than buying new but its not a perfect solution The boom can sometimes encourage overconsumption and not all donated or resold items find a final home The most sustainable choice is to buy less overall
What happens to clothes that dont get sold in thrift stores
A significant portion is unsellable due to stains damage or poor quality These items may be downcycled into industrial rags or insulation shipped overseas in bulk or unfortunately end up in landfills
Intermediate Questions
Why cant all donated items be resold
The sheer volume is overwhelming Charities and resale platforms receive massive amounts and sorting is laborintensive Many items are not in good condition when donated The market demand is also specificit often favors trendy branded or highquality pieces leaving basics and damaged goods behind
Does the resale boom encourage brands to make more clothes
It can create a complex cycle Some brands see resale as a new revenue stream and may produce more to fuel both primary and secondary markets However forwardthinking brands are starting to design for longevity and circularity aiming to keep their products in use longer
Whats the difference between resale and donation