Every year, vast quantities of fast-fashion castoffs flow from Europe and North America to Ghana, placing heavy pressure on local markets and the environment. The Or Foundation, a nonprofit headquartered in Accra, Ghana's capital, has long carried out on-the-ground work, seeking to push the industry toward a circular economy from the source of the waste pileup. Its core focus is the end point of secondhand clothing circulation, exemplified by the Kantamanto market; according to the organization's figures, roughly 15 million secondhand garments arrive at this market each week from the UK, Europe, and North America, far exceeding local capacity to absorb them.

To find viable resource-recovery pathways, the foundation established the Materials Technology and Transformation Lab (MTTL) in Accra, where a team of engineers, designers, and citizen scientists uses discarded clothing collected from the market to develop two new recycled materials—Cassaboard and Tarnty. Cassaboard is a biocomposite board made from old garments and cassava adhesive, suitable for interior finishing; Tarnty transforms idle T-shirts into knittable yarn, with each ball of yarn using an entire T-shirt, bridging both handcraft and the recycling supply chain. The two materials will make their debut at the Material Matters exhibition during London Design Week from September 12 to 20 this year.

At the community level, the foundation has more than 80 local staff who regularly work alongside the local sanitation department and community cleanup groups; each week, Accra's beach cleanups recover 18 tons of textile and plastic waste. For market vendors frequently hit by fires and floods, the foundation launched the "Secondhand Solidarity Fund," providing emergency funds and basic supplies such as fire extinguishers. The foundation conducts education and outreach through its US branch, advocating a new person-clothing relationship stripped of consumer identity, and speaks out in political circles, urging regulatory adjustments regarding responsibility for secondhand clothing imports and textile waste. The guiding principle of this work comes down to one phrase: "settle, restore, compensate"—a shared reckoning for people and the environment. The growing mountain of discarded clothing forces people to care more than ever before—the value of the buyer cannot end the moment the delivery reaches the checkout counter.

Source: The Or Foundation: driving systemic change through textile waste · Originally published 2026-08-26