The expression ‘Obroni wa wu’, which in the Akan language means ‘dead white man's clothes’, has become a symbol of globalisation and its negative impacts. Coined in Ghana, it describes the mass of used clothes that are imported from Western countries and sold at bargain prices in African markets: ‘one man's trash is another man's treasure’.
The clothes we buy for a few euros and quickly consume have a huge impact on our lives, on the planet, on millions of people working in the garments industry in miserable conditions. Every year more than 150 billion new garments arrive on the market, which once discarded pollute the beaches of Ghana, the deserts of Chile, or which we literally eat in the form of microplastics.
And on top of it all, a scandalous plundering of human beings.
