This article is part of our ‘(Re)Made in Ghana’ series, which explores what one of the world’s largest circular fashion ecosystems — Kantamanto Market — can teach us about the future of fashion. Read our series on ‘Made in Italy’ here, ‘Made in India’ here, and ‘Made in the UK’ here.

Over the past five years, extended producer responsibility (EPR) has become one of the most highly anticipated and fiercely debated regulations in fashion. When it finally came into force in September, many thought that debate was at an end. It turns out it’s only just beginning.

Across Europe, member states are scrambling to implement their own EPR schemes before the 2028 deadline, raising concerns about the lack of harmonization, the shortfall in funding for vital infrastructure, and driving competition for authority over how everything plays out. On the other side of the world, key actors in developing countries such as Ghana and Kenya — which receive high volumes of used clothing from Europe every week — are vying for a slice of the EPR pie, arguing that they’re the ones dealing with Europe’s textile waste, whether they like it or not.

The result is fierce competition for scant funding, and a question no one seems able or willing to solve: how much should EPR schemes be charging producers, and how exactly should it be spent?

The case for globally accountable EPR

In its current form, EPR is designed to raise funds for end-of-life management by charging the companies that produced the garments in the first place, following the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Globally accountable EPR — which Ghanaian American non-profit The Or Foundation has been calling for since 2019 — goes one step further, acknowledging that the people dealing with textile waste at the end-of-life stage are often outside EU borders, and funds should flow accordingly.

“Ghana alone receives about 15 million garments per week from the Global North. Not all of the ‘reusable’ garments contained in these bales are resellable, yet retailers buy the bales, and then have to invest in washing, ironing and repairing them, or upcycling the lower value garments — which might be damaged or stained — to try and make a profit,” explains Clémence Faure, EU engagement and Speak Volumes campaign lead at The Or Foundation. “Without their investment and skill, more garments could go unsold and be disposed of as waste. So they spend money to recirculate the Global North’s discards, but receive no compensation from the EPR fee. This disconnect between intention and reality makes EPR highly ineffective.”

The Or Foundation is advocating for globally accountable EPR on the basis that textile waste is often dealt with outside of Europe, so end-of-life funds should flow accordingly.Photo: Bella Webb

If amended, The Or Foundation says EPR has the potential to catalyze a justice-led transition from linear to circular economy. Specifically, it wants EPR fees to align with eco-modulated waste management costs and financially incentivize circular practices, with fees starting at $0.50 per newly produced garment as a “floor rate”. It would also like brands to disclose their production volumes as part of EPR schemes, and commit to reducing them by 40% over five years, balanced with the increase of reuse and remanufacture of existing materials.

“There is an urgent need for policymakers to incentivize brands to change their business models: produce fewer new garments overall, at a higher quality, and displace new clothes with circular activities,” says Faure. “Ultimately, this waste doesn’t ‘go away’ — it is piling up in someone else’s country.”

The burden of proof

For Ghana — or any other country receiving used clothing from Europe — to claim EPR funds, it would need to prove that what it received was in fact waste, and that the waste originated in Europe, neither of which are easy to do. The first taps into a deep-rooted debate at the heart of the EU’s waste framework directive and the waste shipment regulation, which were designed to guarantee that anything exported from the EU is both reusable and resellable.

Spend a day at Kantamanto Market in Ghana — one of the world’s largest circular fashion ecosystems — and it’s clear that the effort to weed out waste from used clothing shipments has been ineffective. Retailers at the market regularly open their bales to find clothing that is stained, damaged, or torn. Retailers say their attempts to complain about the quality of bales are met with rebuttal: if they don’t like the bales, they can take their business elsewhere. But with so many retailers trapped in cycles of debt, they say they don’t have many other options but to keep buying bales in the hope of turning a profit. “Then you have a perfect storm,” says Robert van de Kerkhof, CEO of circular textile alliance ReHubs. “These are inefficiencies in the system that really need to be looked at by policymakers.”

Retailers at Kantamanto Market in Ghana say bales of used clothing from Europe often arrive damaged, like the shoes pictured here.Photo: Bella Webb

The second question — how to prove that waste originated in Europe — is just as thorny, says Patrik Frisk, CEO of German materials regeneration company Reju and initiator of the European Circular Textile Coalition. The global secondhand textile trade is relatively opaque, with the true origin of garments obscured by a series of middlemen, from collectors and sorters to exporters and importers, from whom retailers in markets like Ghana buy their bales.

“A lot of the textile waste in Ghana is not coming directly from Europe, it’s coming from China, or from the US and Canada via Pakistan or Bangladesh, where it is repackaged and redistributed. To properly compensate countries like Ghana, you would need to know exactly where the waste is coming from, which is a level of traceability that’s almost non-existent today.” (Proponents hope incoming digital product passports could help solve this for future textile waste, but they won’t help with the mountains already in circulation.)

The competition for funds

Exactly what EPR ought to fund is still up for debate. There are calls for collection and sorting infrastructure, pre-processing facilities, research and development in automation, capacity-building for reuse and recycling, and everything in between. Even within the push for recycling infrastructure, there is a debate around which materials and methods should be prioritized.

In this context, globally accountable EPR, however valid and progressive, is simply another suggestion likely to get drowned out, says van de Kerkhof. “Right now, you have cities spending a lot of money on installing textile waste collection bins, then forbidding petrol-based trucks from emptying those bins, which means they need to invest in electric trucks, and they want some of the EPR funds to make those investments. Then, you have collectors and sorters saying they are almost bankrupt, so they need EPR funds to invest in automation. Meanwhile, brands want EPR funds to cover the premium on circular versus incumbent products.”

In Accra, Ghana, the Tide Turners beach clean-up cooperative clears 30 tons of textile waste off the local beach every week. Their work is not currently paid for by the brands producing these garments, but it could be under a globally accountable EPR scheme.Photos: Bella Webb

All things considered, ReHubs estimates a €5-6 billion shortfall in EPR funding, noting that most EPR schemes won’t even start collecting fees until 2028. Plus, with the EU backpedaling on key regulations, undermining the incentive for circularity, many of the private investors that could plug the gap are spooked. “Before, investors were willing to invest because the legislation train was running at full speed. Now, they’re willing to invest if we are, which means half the funding still has to come from the EU.”

So who is responsible for deciding how the funds are actually spent? That falls to the producer responsibility organizations (PROs), but it’s not as simple as one per country. “So far, the Netherlands has three PROs and Italy has eight,” says van de Kerkhof. “We’re talking about competing initiatives with completely different set-ups, each of which have overheads to pay. It’s going to be extremely difficult.” (This conversation is gaining pace in Europe. Just this week, organizations including the Global Fashion Agenda, Euratex and Ecommerce Europe put out a joint statement calling for PROs to remain producer-driven, with a clear distinction between regulator, supervisor and operator, and for efforts to be harmonized across member states.)

Moving money across borders

As with any funding earmarked for impact, there is also the question of where money is best spent, says Elmar Stroomer, co-founder of Africa Collect Textiles (ACT), which collects, sorts and transforms textile waste in Kenya. “If you have €1 million from EPR funds and you are in the Netherlands, you might be able to bump up your used textile collection rate by 5%,” he says. “But if you spend the same money in Kenya, where the collection rate is currently close to zero and the lack of infrastructure means textile waste is being burned outside or flowing into rivers, you could have a much bigger impact.”

Even if European countries agreed to send some of their EPR funds to countries on the receiving end of used clothing shipments, moving money across borders is seen as “legally challenging”, says Stroomer. But policymakers are going to have to overcome this perception, whether they adopt globally accountable EPR or not.

Used clothing is regularly exported from Europe to the Global South, but policymakers say moving EPR funds in the same direction would be challenging.Photo: Bella Webb

For example, ReHubs aims to have 2.5 million tons of recycling capacity by 2032, though van de Kerkhof says this is unlikely to happen exclusively within Europe. “The moment you start talking about chemical recycling, most countries are going to be too small to have this in-country,” he explains. “This is a major issue, and it means we are going to have to try and lobby with individual countries to get them to jointly spend part of their EPR funds with other countries, to make sure we have enough money for big investments.”

“We cannot do it alone in Europe,” van de Kerkhof continues. “Energy and labor costs are incredibly high, and that’s before you consider the availability of labor in Europe. Not to mention that really fundamental steps in the textile value chain are missing here. We absolutely need to work with other countries.”