A Fashion ‘Zombie’ is Stalking New York City. Here’s Why.
It’s not just your imagination. A clothing waste “zombie” is haunting the streets of Manhattan.
The ambulatory pile of discarded clothing—in reality, British artist Jeremy Hutchison in incognito—is the public face (or rather, body) of The Or Foundation’s “Speak Volumes” campaign, which was piloted over three weeks in the United Kingdom during the holiday season last year before creeping across the pond in time for New York Fashion Week.
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The Ghana-based environmental justice nonprofit has been calling on fashion brands, particularly those whose labels are often found strewn across the West African nation’s beaches, to publicly declare their production volumes. A handful of companies already do this: Adidas, for instance, wrote in its latest annual report that it generated 328 million units of apparel in 2023, down from 482 million the year before. Lululemon churned out 141 million pieces in 2022, a slight decrease from the 142 million it proferred in 2021, according to its impact report. Fendi’s website states that it put 3 million items out into the world in 2023.
But the fact that the vast majority of companies consider this proprietary information means that the industry doesn’t have a clear picture of how many new garments are produced each year. That no one can tell for certain if the number is 80 billion or closer to 200 billion is an embarrassing data gap, said Liz Ricketts, co-founder and director of The Or Foundation, which stepped up its engagement with brands last month before turning the “zombie” loose.
No amount of effort to clean up textile waste pollution on the ground is a match for the Leviathan that is fast fashion, Ricketts said. Roughly 15 million clothing castoffs pour into Accra, Ghana’s largest city and capital, from Europe and North America every week. Some 40 percent eventually leave Kantamanto Market, its largest secondhand marketplace, as garbage. The Or Foundation itself removes nearly 20 tons of textile and plastic waste from shorelines on a weekly basis.
“The reality is that unless we are tackling the root of the issue, which is the fact that there are too many clothes being produced every year, none of the work that we’re doing is going to make a dent,” she said. “Holding companies to account is the first thing.”
The second, Ricketts said, ties in with the organization’s broader “Stop Waste Colonialism” initiative, which seeks to make extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes the norm worldwide. And a third is asking brands to implement a reduction target of 40 percent over five years, eco-modulated based on their overall product volume.
Transparency about numbers, however, needs to be a priority as legislation such as the European Union’s waste framework directive and California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act takes further shape.
“If we don’t have adequate data on production volumes from different segments of the industry, it’s very difficult to put forward details around that request in terms of what that policy might actually look like,” Ricketts said. “And of course, policymakers like details, so this is the data is really helpful in continuing that side of our advocacy and really fleshing out the nuts and bolts of that policy.”
The appearance of the “zombie” is another way to invite the public into the conversation, she said. Hutchison has been prowling fashion shows, storefronts, the Brooklyn Bridge and, notably, Times Square, where The Or Foundation has taken out billboards highlighting the devastating impact of textile waste in the global South—courtesy of an anonymous donor in Los Angeles.
Hutchison said that his appearance, which continues until Tuesday, has attracted a mix of nervous laughter, fear and revulsion, which feels appropriate as a response to “ the absurdities of unregulated consumerism.”
“I frequently hear people saying, ‘Only in New York,’ which is ironic, given that this artwork is very global: It began in West Africa, traveled across the U.K. before landing in the U.S.,” he said. “But I think it suggests that New Yorkers embrace spectacle, humor and weirdness.”
The Or Foundation stirred no small amount of controversy in 2022 when it accepted a $15 million grant from e-tail titan Shein—even then a byword for profligacy and disposability—to help clean up any of its waste that might be ending up in Accra.
A ‘neocolonial mindset’
Despite the furor, the infusion has been transformational for Ricketts and her team, who have been able to expand their efforts to clean up dumpsites, improve safety conditions at Kantamanto Market, provide vendors with debt and crisis relief and transition the young women who transport bales of clothing on their heads—known as “kayayei”—to less backbreaking work, such as making mops and fiberboard from used garments. The Or Foundation has also used the money to build a hybrid-solar-powered research vessel to map textile pollution along Accra’s coasts, fund ecotoxicology and microplastics studies, and embark on a textile-to-textile recycling pilot program. Other brands haven’t been as forthcoming with their dollars.
“Waste itself is not the problem,” Ricketts said. “It’s the fact that we’re producing too much and we do not have the systems to be able to deal with it. And I think so much of the issue that we certainly confront doing work on the ground is that the average person in the global North just does not have the same tangible relationship with this reality of waste. They don’t notice it, and they don’t feel it in the same way that we do.”
On Wednesday, Greenpeace Africa and Greenpeace Germany released a report revealing what they described as the “alarming scale” of environmental and public health damage caused by the global secondhand clothing trade in Ghana. Indoor air samples from public washhouses in Accra’s Old Fadama settlement showed “dangerously high” levels of toxic substances, including carcinogens like benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, while infrared testing of clothing refuse revealed that nearly 90 percent comprise polyester and other synthetic fibers that contribute to microplastic pollution, the report said.
“The evidence we have collected shows that the fast fashion industry is not just a fashion issue—it’s a public health crisis. The clothes we tested are literally poisoning the people of Accra,” said Sam Quashie-Idun, head of investigations at Greenpeace Africa and the report’s author. “The situation in Ghana reflects a neocolonial mindset where the global North profits from overproduction and waste, while countries like Ghana pay the price. It’s time for a global treaty that addresses this imbalance and protects communities from the harm caused by fast fashion.”
While The Or Foundation connected with the Greenpeace team when it visited Accra, Ricketts said it doesn’t support the environmental group’s call to ban imports—nor do the vendors and tailors with which it works in Kantamanto, a bustling ecosystem of 30,000 entrepreneurs who have created livelihoods for themselves reselling, repairing and upcycling clothing. The market, she said, is both a “model of circularity and a wake-up call for the impact of fast fashion,” while outlawing imported used clothing would only result in an inrush of new fast fashion from overseas to “fill the void.”
“The colonial legacy that has led secondhand clothing from the global North to dominate local markets in Ghana needs to be unwound and the pollution caused by the lowering quality of clothing being produced globally absolutely needs to be addressed, but a ban is not a holistic response to either of these challenges,” Ricketts said.
She returned to the need for EPR to “internalize” the “trust cost” of waste management, including the remediation of Ghana’s beaches.
“We need EPR to become globally accountable so frontline communities are empowered to develop long-term solutions that detangle the cycle of dependence between sender and receiver nations and we need brands to publish production volumes so we can establish informed reduction targets for the industry,” Ricketts said.
And until then, the fashion “zombie” will stalk on.
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