Accra-based non-profit organisation The Or Foundation will unveil the recycled textiles platform Foose Materials to the public for the first time as part of the London Design Festival.

Showcasing at Material Matters, an annual design event and trade show focused on the vital role of materials and sustainability in architecture, craft, and design, Foose Materials will introduce two new recycled material lines, along with products developed using these materials.

Cassaboard and Tarnty are innovations from The Or Foundation’s Material Technology and Transformation Lab (MTTL), where a team of engineers, designers, and citizen scientists has been developing material pathways to divert post-consumer garment waste collected at Kantamanto Market in Accra.

Cassaboard is a recycled biocomposite made from post-consumer textile waste. The unsold and discarded textiles are shredded and blended with cassava-based binders – a natural, locally abundant resource – to transform them into a fiberboard material suitable for various interior building applications.

The material’s superior sound-absorbing properties make it the perfect base material for the Foose Acoustics line, featuring bookshelf speakers and geometric acoustic panels. The bright colours in each piece are derived entirely from recycled textiles, so no additional dyes are used throughout the process.

Tarnty is a circular t-shirt yarn, made from unsold t-shirts sourced in Kantamanto Market. Developed in response to the volume of low-quality, single-use t-shirts – merchandise produced for conferences, company events, marathons and hen dos– flooding the secondhand market, each ball of Tarnty is made from one t-shirt. The yarn is suitable for knitting, crochet, weaving and other crafts. The yarn will be showcased alongside woven products, including traditional cloth and garments made in collaboration with weaving communities in Northern Ghana.

Kantamanto is one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing markets, receiving approximately 15 million used garments each week, primarily exported from the UK, Europe, and North America.

The rise of the fast fashion business model, which prioritises volume over value and results in declining garment quality, has left countries such as Ghana at the receiving end of a mounting waste crisis, visible in mountainous landfill piles, clogged waterways, and beaches littered with discarded clothing.

While this crisis has been widely documented, less attention has been paid to the solutions being developed by affected communities on the ground.

Through Foose Materials, The Or Foundation aims to divert waste and create new value streams while reducing debt, remediating landscapes and generating dignified work for the Kantamanto community.

Material Matters, the cross-media platform promoting material intelligence in architecture and design, returns for its fifth London edition from 15-17 September 2026 in a new home. UNLOCKED Shoreditch is a multi-level former industrial warehouse on Curtain Road, at the heart of Shoreditch Design Week (SDW) – the most significant district within the annual London Design Festival.

Tickets are free, but all attendees must register here or upon arrival at the fair.