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Black Friday transforms consumerism into a blood sport. Even before the Thanksgiving meal is over, Americans are scanning brands’ websites for promotions. The day itself is the biggest day of the year for in-person shopping, as people brave the crowds to score deals.

But the day is also a disaster for the planet. One study, from the University of Leeds, found that 80% of Black Friday purchases are discarded after minimal use. And those are items that people keep.



Consumers return half of all gifts, and retailers discard a quarter of returns, which leads to six billion pounds of brand-new items in landfills . Many discarded products and returns are shipped off to Africa and South America, where local governments struggle to manage enormous mountains of waste. For instance, 15 million garments arrive at Kantamanto Market in Ghana every week, and 40% of them leave as waste.

This is something that Liz Ricketts has seen herself. She’s the cofounder and executive director of the Or Foundation, a Ghana-based nonprofit that asks brands to disclose their annual production volumes. “Every week, our team is removing an average of 20 tons of discarded secondhand clothing from a small section on a local beach,” she says.

“This is a place where many of our team members grew up playing football and saw sea turtles laying eggs. The clothing waste has made this impossible, and fishermen are catching more clothing and other plastic waste than fish.” Most brands feel pressure to giv.

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