︎Fast Fashion,
Slow Waste
The city of Accra hugs the coastline of the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa. Standing on the shores and looking out at the horizon, one can imagine that this is an idyllic place but looking down at your feet you are confronted with another reality. The beaches here are clotted with plastic bottles, polythene bags, wrappers and wads of wet and soiled clothing in layers so thick that you can barely see the sand. In Accra, waste is disposed of by open dumping and open burning. Tipped waste forms small smouldering mountains that pickers climb everyday. On the surface, the waste problem, looks like a result of poor infrastructure, and it is - however, it’s also more than that. Contributing to the problem is our taste for fast fashion and over-consumption. Ghana receives around 15 million items of used clothing each week from Western countries and China; 40% of this ends up in these massive urban landfills. The impact of all this garbage is not simply environmental. It affects the lives of the fishermen, the waste pickers and their families living here in makeshift homes. Fast Fashion, Slow Garbage takes a candid look at the people living on the margins trying to glean a subsistence living. It begs the viewer to ask themselves,