The Clothes That Never Die: How Fast Fashion Is Burying Africa in Plastic

By Rhett Ayers Butler

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Mountains of smoking waste sprawl across the Dandora dump in Nairobi, Kenya. The acrid stench clings to the air; marabou storks pick over scraps alongside people searching for plastic bottles or bones. Interspersed among the refuse are scraps of fabric — remnants of the global fast-fashion boom. Mongabay’s Elodie Toto describes the scene.

Kenya imported more than 900 million items of used clothing in 2021, according to the Changing Markets Foundation. More than half were unsellable; more than a third contained synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon, which do not biodegrade. Instead, they fragment into microplastics, laced with toxins from PFAS to phthalates, which seep into soil, water and air. These fibers can lodge in the stomachs of animals, carrying chemicals linked to cancer.

The waste arrives thanks to a model perfected in the rich world. Fast fashion, and its newer, more frenetic cousin, ultra-fast fashion, churns out thousands of cheap garments daily, designed to be worn briefly and discarded. Between 2016 and 2020, the value of secondhand clothing imports into Kenya rose by 80%, from $100 million to $180 million. The same trend is visible across Africa, from Ghana to Madagascar.

France has decided to intervene. In March 2024, Anne-Cécile Violland, a member of the French parliament, proposed a bill to curb overconsumption and raise awareness of fashion’s environmental costs. Adopted unanimously by the Senate in June 2025, it bans online advertising for ultra-fast fashion, mandates environmental-impact ratings for garments, and imposes penalties on low-scoring items.

“A T-shirt made by Shein … will not get the same score as a Zara T-shirt made in Morocco — and therefore won’t get the same penalty,” Violland explains.

Campaigners welcome the law but say it is narrow. “The real issue is overproduction,” says Mathilde Pousseo of Collectif Ethique sur l’Etiquette, a coalition promoting ethical clothing production, noting that charity shops are overwhelmed not just by Shein but by mainstream brands. Others point out that even French retailers have been linked to forced labor and deforestation.

The bill now heads to a joint parliamentary committee, with activists seeking broader coverage. Once implemented in France, Violland says she hopes to take it to the European Commission.

In theory, less consumption means less waste. In practice, mountains of synthetic rags continue to rise — many of them half a world away from the consumers who first bought them.

Read the full story by Elodie Toto here.

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Previously Published on news.mongabay with Creative Commons Attribution

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