MFC Tie-Dye Inc.

• Post-consumer fashion pollution is a system by which consumers, primarily in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries in the Global North shift their textile waste to countries in the Global South, such as Ghana.
• As evidenced by the number of countries who have attempted to limit secondhand textile imports, these clothes create a myriad of social and environmental problems. In the social context, they put local artisans out-of-work, which is detrimental because the creative economy is a critical source of income and informal work for many marginalized people. Environmentally, the secondhand clothes make their way into landfills, open-air dumps, and the environment, leading to environmental health impacts. We believe that shifting waste from the Global North to countries in the Global South, such as Ghana, is an issue of environmental injustice and waste colonialism.
• In many projects which connect the U.S. and Ghana, problems are conceived as originating in Ghana, and solutions in “expertise” from the U.S. and Global North. At MFC Tie-Dye Inc., we are working to recognize and communicate that the problem of post-consumer fashion pollution originates in the Global North, and that solutions to the issue are already occurring in Ghana. By partnering with community leaders at The MFI Foundation, we seek to not only draw attention to these types of community-based solutions but to fund them.
• MFC stands firmly in opposition to capitalism, an economic system that supports individual profit and creates worker exploitation, excess consumption, and environmental degradation. MFC seeks to participate in new forms of commerce which foster artisan and environmental wellness and in which high-quality, zero waste goods would be exchanged in an ethical manner, with the majority of benefits returning to the creators of those goods and their communities.

• As an organization, we believe it is our responsibility to unequivocally say that Black Lives Matter and condemn anti-Blackness. We are committed to doing our part to be an actively anti-racist organization. We believe this involves naming systems of white supremacy where we see them and working to dismantle them. MFC team members are engaged in this work both in and outside the project.
• MFC recognizes that our work exists within a historical context of settler colonialism, chattel slavery, and other forms of human and environmental exploitation enacted by people in the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere in the Global North on people in Ghana and many other locations in Africa and the Global South. Furthermore, we recognize MFC Tie-Dye Inc. is registered on unceded land of the Dakota people stolen through settler-colonialism.
• We also recognize that through global development, actors in the Global North have sought to maintain unequal power structures through neocolonial policies and practices. These are all systems of white supremacy. “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” – Kwame Nkrumah
• The economic system of Ghana is partially dependent on aid loans and agricultural exports, both of which can be used as a means for political and economic control. This contributes to global inequality.
• Many cross-cultural projects based in the United States continue to frame their work through a “white savior” lens, suggesting that the role of actors in the U.S. — particularly white actors — is to fix challenges in Ghana. We name this framing as a lie. In reality, social justice issues that exist in Ghana are more often than not related to colonialism and systems of white supremacy.
• MFC takes its role seriously in educating people in the United States in particular about the ways we contribute to social and environmental issues in Ghana through historical and present-day systems such as waste colonialism.
• We are also committed to working with our partner in Ghana in ways that affirm the reality that artisans in Ghana know their own lives, communities, and needs best and which prioritize local leadership and ownership over the solutions artisans develop to social and environmental challenges. Where we fall short, we are committed to learning, improving our work and communications, and continuing to grow. We believe that our project has grown substantially and in important ways since its founding and seek for our upcycling partnership to continue to become a healthier and more equitable form of collaboration.
• On a global scale, fast fashion has created an unjust reality where CEOs earn millions and garment workers — especially those who are Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous — earn only a small fraction of the value they create. MFC is committed to working with MFI Foundation to create living wages for and with artisans. MFC also advocates for alternatives to fast fashion – including clothing reuse, upcycling, and other ethical fashion projects.
• In Ghana, gendered systems also result in large numbers of women working in the informal sector. This can positively affect women’s autonomy. At the same time, this can be driven by neocolonial economic realities. Seeking to understand this cultural context, we partner with women at the MFI Foundation, listening to their needs and leadership. MFI Foundation works closely with women with disabilities, who are disproportionately affected by educational and employment inequities. MFC was founded by American women and non-binary people. Since the beginning, the team has included trans and disabled leaders. The MFC team and the MFI team together form a unique coalition dedicated to achieving gender and other types of equity in distinct and related areas.

• We believe that change is only long-lasting when local leaders are at the forefront. MFC is proud to have supported the MFI Foundation since its onset. The MFI Foundation was founded by Matilda Lartey, a fashion designer and environmental activist in Greater Accra, Ghana. Since then, the MFI Foundation has been governed by a local board of directors in Ghana and also maintains partnerships with local community-based organizations. This grassroot approach is essential to the work of the MFI Foundation and the vision of MFC.
• MFC is on a mission to reduce global fashion pollution, and we’ve co-created a solution in partnership with the MFI Foundation in Ghana. Through producing upcycled fashion and creating sustainable work, our partnership is challenging what cross-cultural collaboration looks like in the fashion industry.
• People with disabilities are systematically excluded from employment around the world, including in the U.S. and in Ghana. MFC believes that persons with disabilities and their family members have a right to employment and the access they need to succeed in the workplace. We defer to MFI Foundation’s board — which includes persons with disabilities and family members of persons with disabilities — for guidance on contextually appropriate ways to create inclusive employment in Ghana.
• An important area of growth for our work is for the MFI Foundation to become financially independent of MFC. The MFI Foundation is an autonomous organization – the Founder and Executive Director Matilda Lartey and the board of directors govern the organization. However, as MFC remains the main financial sponsor for the MFI Foundation’s upcycling programs, we acknowledge that donor pressure can have an impact on the independent function of organizations. We are working with the MFI Foundation to grow and find other partners to sell on local and global markets, toward a collective vision of the MFI Foundation being financially independent and sustainable by 2032.

Some major advancements MFC has made in realizing these core values since 2020 include:

• We collaborated to create the LEAPS Conference, an annual online conference that brings together diverse stakeholders to discuss community and structural solutions to textile waste.
• We collaborated on the Aftermath Sculpture and Textile Waste Facts, an art advocacy and educational project that has engaged thousands of people on the issue of global fashion pollution.
• We formalized a fair wage compensation policy that guarantees wages for artisans and trainees at the Matilda Flow Inclusion Foundation to be 70 to 130% above the minimum wage in Ghana.
• We supported expansion of the Matilda Flow Inclusion Foundation board to be more diverse and representative of the community.
• We collaborated with the Matilda Flow Inclusion Foundation to create a new website that includes video and photos of team members and better represents the voice of local team leaders.
• We funded a grant to support a Social Media Manager and Inventory and E-Commerce Specialist at the Matilda Flow Inclusion Foundation for the development of a locally managed Shopify store that deposits proceeds directly to the Foundation.
• MFC is currently focused on collaborating with the Matilda Flow Inclusion Foundation to address structural barriers affecting the project, including challenges related to financial transfers to Ghana, e-commerce, shipping logistics, marketing, reporting requirements, and quality control. This work supports MFC’s vision of transitioning full control of the upcycling partnership to local governance and management teams in Ghana by 2027-2028. This transition represent the full realization of MFC’s core values.