Unusable cast-offs: Western second-hand clothes end up in the rubbish dump in Africa | our woman in Nairobi, Saskia Houttuin

In my student days, an average Saturday looked like this: working a morning shift behind the cash register, spending everything in the afternoon at that one well-known Swedish fashion chain and off you go, in the evening in my newly bought outfit to the pub. For a destitute student I had a suspiciously full wardrobe, which I had to muck out every so often to make room for new acquisitions. For example, I regularly found out that – oops – I had completely forgotten the existence of some items of clothing.

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