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From "world's driest desert" to planet's largest "clothing graveyard"

From "world's driest desert" to planet's largest "clothing graveyard"

According to Wikipedia, the Atacama Desert is the "driest non-polar place on Earth". It extends in the Great North of Chile, covering an area of ​​approximately 105,000 km². And to that end of the planet, the excess of consumption, the logic of international trade and the absolute lack of control and regulation, comes the discarding of fashion world.

The desired garment, the perfect fit, the dream brand. It is not a large store or a generous wardrobe, but the Atacama desert in Chile turned into a clandestine dump of clothes that are bought, worn and discarded in the wealthy world of the United States, Europe and Asia.

Some 59,000 tons of clothing per year enter through the free zone of the port of Iquique, in the Tarapacá region. The total absence of control has allowed mountains of garments to end up in the Atacama desert and other points in the area.

Rounding any bend in a dusty road, huge, colorful dunes rise up out of the desolate landscape. Huge piles of clothing that grow, as, ton after ton, they enter the free zone of the port of Iquique, 1,800 kilometers from Santiago, enriching unscrupulous businessmen who charge for receiving garbage that other countries do not accept.

The excessive and fleeting consumption of clothing, with chains capable of releasing more than 50 collections of new products per year, has caused textile waste to grow exponentially in the world, which can take many years to disintegrate.

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Chile is the largest importer of used clothing in Latin America. For nearly 40 years there has been a solid trade in "American clothing" in stores throughout the country, which are supplied with bundles purchased through the free zone in the north of the country from the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.

In that area of ​​importers and preferential taxes, merchants from the rest of the country select the garments for their stores and what is left cannot go through customs in this region of just over 300,000 inhabitants. “What was not sold to Santiago or he went to other countries (such as Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay for smuggling), so he stays here because it is a free zone,” says Carreño.

Clothes are not the only things that end up here in this “second and third hand” store, there are all kinds of rubbish, as well as handbags and shoes, tires and bottles.

toxic fashion

Reports on the textile industry have exposed the high cost of fast fashion, with outsourced workers, claims of child labor and deplorable conditions for mass production. Added to this today are devastating figures on its immense environmental impact, comparable to that of the oil industry.

According to a 2019 UN study, the production of clothing in the world doubled between 2000 and 2014, which has made it clear that it is an industry "responsible for 20% of the total waste of water globally".

The local authorities assure that the problems originate from not having a place to deposit the waste, the lack of control and the massive purchase of clothing that arrives from abroad, where many garments end up discarded in different areas of the region. to buy and throw away, they say nothing.

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