The desired garment, the ideal size and the dream brand: it is not a large store or a generous wardrobe, but the Atacama Desert in Chile, it has become a clandestine garbage dump for clothing that is bought, dressed and thrown away in the United States, Europe and Asia.
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Colorful hills rise out of the desolate landscape. They are platoons that grow as you 59,000 tons per year They enter through the free zone of the port of Iquique, 1,800 kilometers from Santiago.
The excessive and fleeting consumption of clothing, with chains capable of releasing more than 50 seasons of new products per year, has caused textile waste to grow exponentially in the world, which takes about 200 years to disintegrate.
(It may interest you: Ideas to reuse and recycle clothes and help the environment).
It is clothing made in China or Bangladesh and bought in Berlin or Los Angeles, before being thrown away. At least 39,000 tons end up as hidden waste in the desert in the Alto Hospicio area of northern Chile, one of the final destinations for ‘second-hand’ clothing or from past seasons of fast fashion chains.
chili is the leading 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 that stock up on bales purchased by the free zone in the north of the country from the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.
“These clothes come from all over the world,” explains Álex Carreño, a former worker from the import zone of the port of Iquique who lives next to a garment dump.
In this zone of importers and preferential taxes, merchants from the rest of the country select the garments for their stores. But what is left over cannot be cleared through customs in this region of just over 300,000 inhabitants.
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What was not sold to Santiago or went to other countries (such as Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay for smuggling), so it stays here because it is a free zone
“What was not sold to Santiago or went to other countries (such as Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay for smuggling), so it stays here because it is a free zone,” affirms Carreño.
And for that reason, on the desert landscape there are stains of all kinds of clothes, purses and shoes. Stains in which, ironically, rain boots or boots stand out. sky in one of the driest areas in the world.
A lady, who does not want to give her name, has half a body sunk in a pile of clothes and rummages in search of the best possible ones to sell in her neighborhood.
Elsewhere, Sofía and Jenny, two young Venezuelan women who crossed the border between Bolivia and Chile a few days ago, some 350 km from the landfill, choose “things for the cold” while their babies crawl on textile hills: “We come to look for clothes because we really don’t have them, we threw them all away when we came back here backpacking.”
Toxic fashion
Reports on the textile industry have exposed the high cost of fast fashion, with underpaid workers, reports of child employment, and deplorable conditions for mass production. To this, devastating figures are added today 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 percent of total water waste globally.”
The same report indicates that only the production of about jeans (jeans) requires 7,500 liters of water, highlights that the manufacture of clothing and footwear generates between eight and ten percent of greenhouse gases, and that “every second an amount of textiles equivalent to a garbage truck is buried or burned.”
In the textile dumps of this Chilean desert, it is possible to stumble upon a United States flag, a pair of polished skirts, see a ‘wall’ of trousers with labels and even step on a collection of sweaters with the Christmas motifs so popular in the festivities of December in London or New York.
“The problem is that clothing is not biodegradable and contains chemical products, that is why it is not accepted in municipal landfills”Franklin Zepeda, founder of EcoFibra, a circular economy firm with a production plant in Alto Hospicio of thermally insulated panels based on these disposable clothing, told AFP.
Underground there are more clothes covered with the help of municipal trucks, in an attempt to prevent fires caused and very toxic by the chemicals and synthetic fabrics that compose it.
(You may be interested: Jute: that ‘golden’ natural fiber that could replace plastic).
But buried or exposed clothing also releases pollutants into the air and into the underground water layers typical of the desert ecosystem. Fashion is so toxic like tires or plastics.
PAULA BUSTAMANTE
AFP
ALTO HOSPICIO (NORTH OF CHILE)
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