Liz Ricketts, USA

Liz Ricketts is the director of The OR Foundation, a USA and Ghana based non-profit working at the intersection of environmental justice, education and fashion development. For the last four years The OR has conducted an in-depth analysis of Accra’s Kantamanto Market, the largest secondhand market in West Africa. They found that 15 million secondhand garments enter Kantamanto every week and 40% leave the market as waste. The impact of this is devastating. At the same time, the vibrant upcycling culture of Kantamanto extends the life of millions of garments. Kantamanto is both a dumping ground for the global North’s excess and a model of sustainability from which the global North could learn.