Industrialized countries send millions of metric tonnes of used clothing, electronic equipment and other products to the Global South, and with them, the environmental and health costs tied to producing, consuming and disposing of those goods.

In Accra, Ghana, thousands of pieces of secondhand clothing arrive each week at the Kantamanto Market, one of the world’s largest textile resale hubs. Some of these garments will find a new buyer and get a second life. Others — unsellable or low-quality — will end up in dumps, waterways or informal landfills.

The environmental accountability that applied to these products back in Europe or North America doesn’t follow them to Ghana.

It’s a paradox rarely discussed: materials circulate globally, but environmental responsibility stops at the border.

When we drop off a used phone at a collection point, donate clothes to an organization or replace an obsolete computer, we often feel like we’ve done our part for the environment. But the story doesn’t end there. Many of these items begin a second life elsewhere, or simply reach the end of the road, sometimes thousands of kilometres away.

Complex and hard-to-trace chains

This issue came up earlier this year at a symposium entitled When the Global South Inspires the Global North, held during the 93rd Acfas (Association canadienne-française pour l'avancement des sciences) congress.

I was in attendance as part of my research on organizational governance models and the shift toward a regionalized circular economy.

In her opening remarks, Jocelyne Landry Tsonang of the African Circular Economy Network pointed out that products often travel without the........

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