The beach of Accra, Ghana. The sun shines. A few people walk on the hard sand, children play. But this is not a pleasant beach. Not a beach where tourists bask in the African sun, drink cocktails on their beds and sometimes take a dip in the Atlantic Ocean to cool off. Smoke comes from large mountains of burnt clothes on this beach. The sea water turns a light brown and in the surf lie huge amounts of wet, filthy, discarded clothing. Our clothes.
A striped dress is half hidden under the dirty sand. Bought for about 7 euros at one of those nice big chains. Worn five times, then it would have been nice and there had to be room in the closet for a new dress of 7 euros. To the clothing container, because perhaps you can make someone else happy with it. But it wasn’t good enough for the Netherlands, not good enough for Eastern Europe, nor good enough for the second-hand clothes sellers on the Accra market. The dress was thrown away and ended up in the sewer. But the sewer didn’t want it either and gave it to the river. The river didn’t want it either and gave it to the beach. The beach didn’t want it either and gave it to the ocean. The ocean didn’t want it either and spat the polyester rag back onto the beach.
On Friday evening, the dress was picked up and held up by presenter Ersin Kiris, who worked for the new consumer / consumer program The price stunner traveled to Ghana to see what eventually happens to all the cheap clothes we buy. And behold, the discarded fruit of our European shopping spree, of always wanting to be in the front row for a dime, thrown over the fence at the African neighbours. Where it causes economic problems, environmental pollution and makes people sick.
The price stunner, which is presented not only by Kiris but also by Eva Cleven, has the ambition to visualize the real costs of products sold at rock bottom prices. That first episode of Friday night was about clothing and promises a lot of good for the rest of the series. Using a combination of simple explanations, figures and on-site reporting, Cleven and Kiris painted a clear and staggering picture of the consequences of Western European shopping spree, fueled by greedy fashion retailers who keep the quality of clothes as low as possible so that they can be replaced quickly. must be. ‘A race to the bottom’, someone put it in The price stunner striking. The start is in the shopping street, at the clothes rack with that nice cheap dress. So the finish is somewhere on the Ghanaian coast.