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EPR Fund Update
In June of 2022, The Or Foundation announced our agreement with SHEIN to establish a Voluntary EPR Fund to support the communities and organizations working to manage secondhand clothing and clothing waste at its true end of life. Given that there are currently no mandated EPR policies that are Globally Accountable, our Agreement with SHEIN sets an important precedent for the fashion industry. As the first recipient of this first-of-its-kind fund, we have been working to demonstrate how Globally Accountable EPR could be implemented. We have simultaneously worked diligently over the last year to advocate for emerging EPR policies in the EU and the USA to mandate Global Accountability, ensuring that the funds brands pay will follow clothing to its final destination in support of social and environmental transformation. Within this post you can find a snapshot of the work accomplished since our last update in July. Please see our prior posts for previous updates, and you can also find our Year One Impact Report on our website.

While we continue to offer regular updates on the progress we make and the lessons learned here in Accra, we ask that you do your part by visiting StopWasteColonialism.orgto learn more about our vision for Globally Accountable EPR and to show your support.

The Mabilgu Transformation Team

• We supported an additional 55 women to leave headcarrying, totaling 218 women removed from head carrying since the Agreement.
• Through partners such as WEE North in Tamale, 32 women are currently in apprenticeships in Tamale, where we are able to offer a residential housing program and immersive apprenticeships in construction trades in addition to our programs in Accra.
• We have supported a total of 64 women to graduate their apprenticeships.
• Members of our Mabilgu Program Team visited 36 rural towns and villages to support reintegration of program participants who have elected to return to the north of Ghana and to share the findings from our chiropractic research study into the causes, conditions and effects of headcarrying.
• We’ve hosted multiple writing workshops with leading writers and filmmakers based on extensive interviews with program participants to help craft the narrative behind our forthcoming Mabilgu Film which is currently in pre-production.

The Material Research & Development Team

• We more than doubled the footprint of our material research and development facilities to over 800sq meters.
• We deployed a three-phase solar power station for our decomposition pilot to run safely, uninterrupted by regular grid power cuts and to model the possibilities of renewable power (in addition to our offices that remain solar powered).
• We worked with community supply chain partners to scale up the capacity within community supply chains to supply 450kg of cassava starch per day in order to match our industrial fiber board processing throughput capacity.
• We shipped additional textile waste material collected in Kantamanto Market to test in Finland for fiber-to-fiber recycling potential and we visited an industrial fiber opening and recycled yarn spinning facility in India to gain a clearer understanding of the full processes required, from detailed sorting through spinning, knitting and material testing in order to comprehensively plan a new model for material transformation.
• We built the second version of our biodigester pilot design, which is currently running in an experimental phase. This project is supported in part by additional third party funding.
• We placed carbon isotope labeled biotraps within the Korle Lagoon and within our bioreactor pilot system to enable work with global research collaborators to begin to determine the rate of plastic waste (including plastic textiles, i.e. polyester) decomposition through microbial processes.

The Community Business Incubation Team

• We launched our Obroni Wawu School for five Accra-based designers as a business incubation program and first step to bring their upcycled products to wider audiences, including featuring their designs on billboards around Accra in support of Kantamanto and products made from upcycled textile waste.
• We held the second annual Obroni Wawu October event at Accra’s Rawlings Park, attracting over 1000 attendees, and dozens of vendors, participants and local and international press coming together to support Ghana’s upcycling culture and Kantamanto’s culture of reuse.
• Mabilgu apprentices within Inkubé (The CBI Brand) launched their mobile resale cart at popups around Accra to sell upcycled products, including our recycled mop, totes, made through their training program.

The Community Engagement Team

• We distributed direct funds to 156 individual community beneficiaries within Kantamanto Market.
• In tandem with this effort we began our first business transformation “Transition Education” cohort of 12 secondhand clothing retailers from Kantamanto Market who we guided through an immersive curriculum in community business financing and business model development.
• In addition to business education and fund distribution, we also conducted advanced fire safety and workplace health and safety training for over 150 community members.
• We support the installation of ramps, stairs and railings, along with roofing repairs across six sections of Kantamanto Market as we continue to work with planners on the Market Upfit project plan.
• We hosted members of sustainable fashion organizations and secondhand market communities from East and West Africa, South America, the USA and France during our Obroni Wawu October event as part of developing a global committee on EPR.

The Ecological Research & Remediation Team

• We launched a public community cleanup program bringing together over 100 community members, 25 part-time team members dedicated to waste removal, a collaborating NGO in Accra, and our full team to remove tons of waste from Accra’s beaches and Old Fadama.
• We established a pilot agreement with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to expand the waste hauling capacity of the municipality to move textile waste out of Kantamanto Market and surrounding ecosystems. This increased collection will be paired with our environmental monitoring efforts to track the impact of increased waste collection.
• We collected more than 500 air and water samples.
• We performed detailed chemical analysis on waste samples from the Korle Lagoon to help guide remediation pathways.
• We hosted multiple visits from scientific advisors, who are helping us prepare our first peer reviewed scientific paper submission on our ecological research findings.

Financial Administration, HR, Digital and Facilities Teams

• We developed a new banking partnership to support our Secondhand Solidarity Fund community banking system and our Mabilgu savings program.
• Our internal team grew to a total of 46 full-time team members with additional active searches currently underway to carry out our work as a tangible program operator and an ecosystem builder. With such team growth we’ve also built the infrastructure to support our team and operate as a responsible and progressive employer.
• We now are operating across 940 square meters of office and community center space, not including our Material Research and Development spaces or our Mabilgu housing.
• We completed the first year of our internal healthcare fund and are working on launching health outreach within Kantamanto Market.
• We also launched a new translation program, catalyzed and supported by a grant from a third party funder, in order to help us build bridges between community members from diverse backgrounds across Ghana and around the world.