This World The Secret Life of Your
Clothes BBC Documentary 2014
In Britain we give thousands of tons
of our unwanted clothes to charity
shops every year. But where do they
actually go? It turns out most don’t
ever reach the rail of the local charity
shop; they are exported to Africa. And
even though we have given them
away for free, our castoffs have
created a multi-million pound
industry and some of the world’s
poorest people pay good money to
buy them.
In this revealing film for BBC Two’s
This World, Ade Adepitan tells the
fascinating story of the afterlife of our
clothes. He follows the trail to Ghana,
the biggest importer of our castoffs.
One million pounds’ worth of our old
clothes arrive here every week. Ade
meets the people who making a living
from our old castoffs, from
wholesalers and markets traders to
the importers raking in a staggering
£25,000 a day. But not everyone is
profiting.
With cheaply made western clothes
flooding the market, the local textile
industry has been decimated. Ade
visits one of the last remaining cloth
factories and finds it on its knees.
And the deluge of our clothes isn’t
just destroying jobs, it has also had
a seismic effect on Ghanaian culture.
Western outfits are fast replacing
iconic West African prints and
traditional garb. Ade travels to remote villages to finds everyone wearing British high street brands.
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