L.A. and Kantamanto: 2 Fires, 2 Responses, 1 Common Problem

Yahoo

29-01-2025

The crumpled sprawls of clothing, used and unwanted, wound along the curbs and occasionally spilled into the streets. They were the regurgitated contents of multiple closets: denim cutoffs, printed blouses, spaghetti-strap dresses, far too many T-shirts to count.
It's a common enough sight in poorer nations like Chile, Ghana or Kenya that have become the 'away' people talk about when they discard things they no longer wish to wear. The castoffs have resulted in towering, often rotting, monuments to overconsumption that have not so much overtaken the landscape as become an indelible part of it.
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While the garments that hugged thoroughfares with names like Washington Blvd. and Summit Ave. in the Southern California city of Pasadena hadn't achieved that state or scale quite yet, the parallels still struck Lindsay Rose Medoff as she stood, heartbroken, amid one of the deluges on a smoky afternoon. There would be many more like it.
This is what happens when the system breaks down, she said, and when well-intentioned donations for those displaced by the recent wildfires become unmanageable.
Medoff is CEO of Suay Sew Shop, a community-centered textile remanufacturer in downtown Los Angeles that quickly set up a 'Free Store for Fire Relief' when wind-swept conflagrations blazed through 27,000 acres, the size of almost 20,000 football fields. Since 2017, its circular textiles program, dubbed 'Suay It Forward,' has diverted more than 4 million pounds of textiles from landfills by upcycling them into apparel and home goods.
A testament to creativity and tenacity, Suay's retail shop touts everything from patchwork jackets cobbled together from workwear uniforms to mesh produce bags derived from old sports jerseys. The entire operation is underpinned by a cavernous warehouse of tossed materials across the street just waiting to be reincarnated.
It's difficult to say where the abandoned clothes came from, though overwhelmed donation drop-off sites could be a likely source, particularly now that many are winding up. Or maybe people have been dumping their contributions on the streets, hoping someone will be able to use them, though the chances of that are pretty slim.
'It's no one's fault; I think a lot of people genuinely wanted to help and jumped into action,' said Medoff, who prefers not to use the d-word. 'I think it started off as something that was genuine and that just became incredibly overwhelming because no one needed, by far, that amount of clothing.'
In the span of a few days, Team Suay has picked up 50,000 pounds of clothing in a steady succession of rented trucks. There's an irony in the fact that the fashion industry's untethered churn is partly to blame for the soaring greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change and, therefore, supercharging extreme weather events like hotter and hungrier fires. And there's always more where that came from.
'We are getting calls, emails, DMs every day to take on more,' she said. 'We're just so broken as consumers. This abundance of waste highlights a global failure to reckon with our overproduction and consumption habits.'
Half a world away in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, on a similar afternoon, Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation, was also contemplating fire and used garments.
In the early hours of Jan. 2, two weeks before the fires in Los Angeles broke out, an inferno of unknown origin tore through Kantamanto Market, West Africa's largest secondhand clothing marketplace. Two people have died, and eight acres of stalls—the equivalent of 60 percent of the market's retail-facing side—burned to the ground. More than 10,000 vendors have witnessed their livelihoods literally go up in smoke.
It's difficult to put an exact number to the damage, but Ricketts, whose organization works with the Kantamanto community to find solutions for textile waste, estimates that tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment, infrastructure, clothing bales and other supplies were lost in the blaze. Ghana is the world's largest importer of used clothing. Kantamanto alone, she said, spends $300 million on bales every year, over half of which is paid to exporters in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
But vendors typically purchase bales sight unseen. And of the 15 million garments that enter Kantamanto every week, a contested 40 percent also leave as garbage because they're too stained or damaged to resell. This is the end of the line: Those that aren't landfilled or incinerated in ad-hoc burn sites go on to pollute Accra's streets, beaches and waterways. They often end up in the ocean, where they're churned up by the waves and disgorged along the coast in grotesque tangled masses, known colloquially as 'tentacles,' that sometimes have to be chiseled out from the sand.
That volunteers at Los Angeles clothing relief sites have complained of discolored or hole-riddled donations doesn't surprise Ricketts. Kantamanto's vendors have been struggling with this for years, particularly with the rise of cheap, low-quality garments—in a phrase, fast fashion—that have left them feeling like their work no longer has dignity and they are selling Westerners' waste.
'For the first time, Americans who are accustomed to putting their clothes in a garbage bag and dropping it off at a charity or 'recycling' bin, many of those donors have become active participants in the secondhand supply chain,' she said. 'For the first time, they are being tasked with opening the trash bags, sorting the clothing and putting their hands on the truth—the truth that there is too much clothing and that clothing is considered disposable.'
Ricketts said it was interesting how L.A. and Kantamanto are being drawn together because of shared tragedy and a similar surfeit of low-value garments with few viable outlets. Without off-ramps such as Kantamanto, however, there is no 'away' for Los Angeles.
Then there is the way responses to both disasters have diverged. The Walt Disney Co. has pledged $15 million to rebuilding Los Angeles. Target donated $1 million to local and national disaster relief organizations such as the League of California Community Foundation. Walmart committed $2.5 million to support relief efforts. Nike said it distributed $7.8 million in financial and product donations to the likes of the American Red Cross and World Central Kitchen. Skechers has shelled out $1 million to Baby2Baby, the California Fire Foundation Wildfire & Disaster Relief Fund and others. Centric Brands and Gap Inc. made unspecified contributions to the L.A. arm of the American Red Cross and the L.A. Fire Department Foundation.
Of the 20 brands that The Or Foundation has stumbled upon with the most frequency during its beach cleanups—including the aforementioned Disney, Gap, Nike and Target—only H&M Group and Puma said they had offered their support to the Kantamanto community, though they wouldn't specify in what way. Inditex declined to comment, while the others—Marks & Spencer, Next, Adidas, Nike, Gap, Primark, George by Asda, F&F by Tesco, Boohoo, Tu by Sainsbury, New Look, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger owner PVH Corp., Asos, Slazenger, Gildan, Disney, Target and Carters— didn't respond to multiple emails requesting the same.
Vestiaire Collective, the pre-owned luxury platform that collaborated with The Or Foundation to release a Black Friday collection of upcycled garments using materials from Kantamanto, donated money to the marketplace. Patagonia, which shared a stage with Ricketts to speak about overproduction at the Textile Exchange conference in Pasadena last October, did not.
Again, Ricketts can't muster much astonishment. 'I am happy to see companies committing millions of dollars to L.A., as they should,' she said. 'It's not surprising that the same global fashion brands are not donating to Kantamanto because their customers are in L.A. and not in Accra.'
She estimates that it will take over $5 million to reconstruct the damaged parts of the market, minus $1.5 million in direct relief to community members whose lives hang in the balance. It's a sum that's a sliver of many brands' marketing budgets—the same ones that power the engines of overconsumption. In the second quarter ended Nov. 30 alone, for instance, Nike spent $1.1 billion in so-called 'demand creation.'
The Or Foundation sprang into action as soon as the fire hit, immediately unlocking $1 million in emergency funds for direct relief. Some of that drew on a controversial $5 million extended-producer-responsibility-like grant that Shein disbursed to the organization over three years, beginning in 2022.
While the e-tail juggernaut hasn't rustled up additional funds, instead giving Kenya's Africa Collect Textiles Foundation $5.3 million last week to expand its used textile collection and recycling efforts, Ricketts sees its prior largesse as a demonstration of how EPR schemes should work. Right now, EPR funds in France, Hungary, the Netherlands and, some point soon, California, do not filter to the countries that serve as textiles' final sinks.
'The communities that need the EPR resources should be given the benefit of deciding how those resources should be used,' she said. 'And that is the positive with the EPR fund that we have; it doesn't stipulate that the resources can only go to material-based products or projects. For instance, we can use it for fire safety and the fire relief effort.'
Chinazo Ufodiama, a brand and communications consultant who specializes in purpose and responsibility, can't hide her disappointment, however. Staying silent about Kantamanto is particularly indefensible, she said, because brands have been 'quietly outsourcing' their waste management to marketplaces like it to 'cover up mass consumption, diminishing quality and excessive overproduction.'
It's also impossible to ignore the stark contrast in the causes that the fashion industry will choose to champion, Ufodiama added. A crowdfunding campaign that The Or Foundation launched for Kantamanto generated just over $221,000 in additional donations.
'When a fire destroyed Notre Dame in 2019, millions of euros were immediately pledged to aid the restoration,' she said, namedropping Kering and LVMH. 'As the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement spilled out from the U.S. into Europe, we saw brands publishing pledges and donating to various organizations. Upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the industry rallied around to donate money and relief packages, publicly expressing their support to Ukraine. And we are seeing an outpouring of support from the global fashion community in response to the ongoing catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles from resource sharing, financial donations, as well as calls for fashion brands to donate clothing and toiletries to those who have lost everything.'
Samata Pattinson is the British-Ghanaian CEO of Black Pearl, a 'cultural sustainability' consultancy. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she can feel to her bones the difference, not only in the acknowledgments of the L.A. and Kantamanto fires, but also to the haves and have-nots in and around Hollywood.
'The response—or lack thereof—to the fire in Kantamanto reflects the historic dehumanization of communities burdened by our waste. Black, African communities often receive far less compassion in times of crisis, rooted in systemic inequality and historical injustices,' she said. 'Yet, the working and diverse communities in L.A. seem to be overlooked in a similar way to those in Kantamanto. 'Hollywood' is part of a vast ecosystem in Greater Los Angeles, where the climate crisis affects not only celebrities but also the countless behind-the-scenes professionals whose livelihoods depend on the entertainment and creative industries, and many who do not work 'regular' jobs to support their families.'
What's clear to Pattinson, however, is that wildfires, air pollution and other climate challenges affect everyone. 'They do not discriminate,' she said. Neither should compassion nor responsibility for the global fashion system have borders.
'Both disasters highlight the same overarching issue: the fashion industry's impact on people, communities and the environment must be addressed—not only in the wake of disasters but as part of a long-term commitment to sustainability, ethical production, and responsible consumption,' Pattinson added. 'Ultimately, it's about acknowledging that no loss is more significant than another—whether it's in Greater Los Angeles or Kantamanto, where communities are left to rebuild, often without the necessary support.'
For the vendors of Kantamanto, the stakes have never been higher. Those who were fortunate to have bales that were stored off-site have set up makeshift storefronts by spreading goods on the ground alongside a nearby railroad, with an umbrella or two in lieu of a shingle. Some have refused to budge from the charred remains of their stalls, where plumes of black, toxin-laden smoke from smoldering synthetic materials uncurled for days, in case opportunistic squatters try to take over. The Or Foundation has been urging people to sleep, eat and stay healthy. Still, anxiety looms as thick and heavy as the air.
'I am tired and I am suffering,' said Akumi Kyei, a 20-year veteran of Kantamanto. 'Before the fire, this market helped people make money to build their homes, take care of their children's education. Now that the fire has destroyed our livelihood, the business has gone down completely. Many people and our customers have heard that Kantamanto market is burnt, and so they believe there is nothing here.'
Like the areas in Los Angeles that were consumed by the fires, Kantamanto is desperate to rebuild. But it's an endeavor that will prove to be expensive even before the first construction efforts can take place: debris needs to be trucked out, plans for a more fire-resilient infrastructure must be drafted, timber has to be purchased, a power grid restored, security enhanced. Meanwhile, the affected vendors have bills—grocery, housing, schooling, medical—that will continue to pile up.
'The majority of the things that I had were here in the market,' said Kyum Kweku, also known as Opaa, who has sold women's jeans in Kantamanto since 1996, working from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening. 'Because I have stayed here for so long, this is where my kitchen is. When I say kitchen, that doesn't mean a typical kitchen. It is a proverb meaning 'this is where I eat from.' This is what I use to pay for my loans and my debts, and also to take care of myself and my family, so when the fire situation happened, I had no money left.'
Asked what he needed most, Kweku did not hesitate. 'Right now all the help we are going to need, all stands on money,' he said. 'It's money that we need to rebuild. It's money! Because, I can't tell you all the things that I have lost, but once I have money, I will be able to use that to rebuild and develop my business again.'
Julian Baba Otoo, who has worked in Kantamanto for more than two decades and lost all six of her sewing machines in the fire, said she arrived the day after to find 'not a single pin' on the floor.'
'When I came, it was just the land that was bare,' she said. 'So now we are waiting and hoping what God will do for us. If you guys have any help for us, please do help us. Because right now, nothing is in our pockets. Everything has been burnt. Because I never dreamt and expected that this would happen, and that Kantamanto burned to this extent that it did.'
Otoo isn't looking for a handout but a hand extended. Or rather, for people to 'hold our waist' so the stall owners can rise up. The secondhand trade is what she knows and she doesn't want to stop doing it. 'If you guys offer me a loan to pay, I will do it and pay for it,' she added.
Venetia La Manna, a fair fashion activist and content creator, wonders if the fire at Kantamanto would have been as voracious if brands were taking responsibility for the full life cycle of their garments. La Manna had been calling out Marks & Spencer, the U.K. department store responsible for the largest amount of clothing waste washing up on Accra's shores, even before 2024 came to a close. Now she sees any financial aid it might give as a 'debt' it already owes the Kantamanto community.
La Manna, who works with The Or Foundation's 'Speak Volumes' campaign to get fashion purveyors to publicly declare their production volumes, isn't alone in that sentiment, either. An Instagram video that she posted on Jan. 16 asking Marks & Spencer to donate to the relief fund has garnered 330,000 views and 16,000 likes. One person who commented said a donation was the least the company could do. Another urged Marks & Spencer, which calls its sustainability initiative 'Plan A' because 'there is no Plan B,' not to 'shrug away responsibility and accountability.'
'Despite pioneering brands like Finisterre, Armedangels and Vivobarefoot publicly endorsing the campaign, M&S has ignored our requests,' she said. 'By ignoring the demands of the community on the frontlines of the textile waste crisis—with overwhelming support from the 'consumers' M&S claims to care about)—this corporation is, unfortunately, proving itself to be nothing more than a champion greenwasher. We don't just expect better, we demand better and we will continue to build pressure until M&S takes responsibility for its oversupply.'
The invisible thread that ties Kantamanto to Los Angeles will continue to do so until brands commit to reducing production volumes and the global North's 'too much' ceases to be a burden, Ricketts said.
'Until we explore this, the impacts of overproduction that contributed to the L.A. fires will remain intrinsically linked to the debt burden that has left Kantamanto without adequate resources to build for fire safety and provide dignified working conditions or to respond holistically to a market disaster of this magnitude,' she said. 'The financial commitments are one thing, but we would also just like to see companies express solidarity. I mean, so much of our work has been trying to help people understand that the secondhand clothing trade is not charity.'
For Medoff, the mounds of clothing being strewn around the affected Southern California areas are, in a way, a manifestation of the toll that fashion production extracts. It's also as clear a sign as any that resources and money need to be poured into the creation of truly circular systems, including in Los Angeles itself.
'The fire brought to the surface for all of us to engage with the very heavy environmental load that textiles carry from the time that they're created to the end of their life as the consumer views it,' she said. 'And then it has a whole other environmental load after the consumer is done with it that we just don't see very often. And now we're seeing it because it's in piles all over town, and people are feeling wildly overwhelmed with what to do with it.'
The planet, Medoff said, is 'screaming' for change. 'How many fires, how many floods, how many disasters need to happen until we shift course?' she asked. 'Sometimes I'm like, 'Do we have to run out of clean water, clean air? Does every natural disaster really have to happen?''