Liz Ricketts, of The OR Foundation. Fighting Textile Waste at the Real End of Life

In this final episode of the podcast, we speak with Liz Ricketts, Co-founder of The OR foundation to shed light on the last stage of life of our garments.  We dive deep into their work, and the economic systems that allow this whole mess to happen in the first place. The OR Foundation is a non profit operating out of the US and Ghana focused on addressing textile waste and supporting the local community of Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, the worlds largest secondhand clothing markets. Their work sits at the intersection of environmental justice, education and fashion. With the decline in quality and increase in overall production, the amount of garments with limited value and unsellable has ballooned, putting the onus to dispose of the remaining textile waste on the global south, where the problem did not originate and where proper waste management infrastructure doesn’t exist. This has created tremendous environmental and social problems for many communities in the global south.  The OR foundation work includes immediate relief through direct action on human rights and environmental abuses, educational programming and awareness and research and institutional advocacy to steer systems level policies and investment.  In this episode we speak about: Fashion brand’s role in over production, and the real end of life of our garmentsWaste Colonialism Local circular ecosystem found at Kantamanto Market Check out their work here: theor.org The OR foundation is behind the ‘Speak Volumes’ campaign urging fashion brands to be held accountable for their over production, by leveraging extended producer responsibility programs to create a justice-led circular textile economy: stopwastecolonialism.orgYoutube: https://youtu.be/UkaoVe_fPzM