Chile Clothing Crisis! Mountain of unsold clothing piles up in Chile's Atacama Desert

While fast fashion is affordable, it is extremely harmful to the environment. In an industry so focused on price and efficiency at the expense of the environment, there is bound to be a lot of waste. In fact, 39,000 pounds of it end up in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a once beautiful region known for its rich history and salt flats, geysers, and deep blue lagoons.

Every year in northern Chile, around 59,000 tons of clothing arrive at the Iquique port, which lies on the Pacific coast, west of the Atacama desert. The clothing in question is secondhand and unsold, typically made in China and Bangladesh. These unworn garments usually pass through Europe, Asia, and the US before arriving in Chile to be resold in Latin America.

The most unsettling aspect of this situation is that these clothing items are not biodegradable and contain chemical products, so they cannot go to municipal landfills. In fact, they can take up to a whopping 200 years to degrade and can be as toxic as discarded plastics! Whenever clothing is left out in the open, it releases pollutants into the environment.

Not only is this an issue with the environment, but this is also a social issue as well, because there are some people out there that are extremely poor and are in need of clothing, and tons of it is being thrown away without being worn first. We often underestimate the toll the fast fashion industry takes on the world. So how can we minimize its impact on society and the environment?

Although fast fashion is affordable, it is not always sustainable. Even though we cannot avoid it entirely, we can limit our dependence on fast fashion by supporting our local thrift stores. Another way to help is to do some research on brands before purchasing clothes, which helps you become a more informed consumer. However, due to sustainability demands, the industry is slowly changing. As more and more people learn about the detrimental effect fast fashion has on the planet, they start to care more about the choices they make and advocate for change.

Sources:

• https://www.insider.com/discarded-fast-fashion-clothes-chile-desert-2021-11

• https://nypost.com/2021/11/09/chilean-desert-site-of-39000-pounds-of-scrapped-clothing/

• https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2021/11/chilean-desert-is-being-polluted-by-mountains-of-unsold-fast-fashion-clothing-tons-of-it-reports-say.html

• https://www.chile.travel/en/where-to-go/macrozone/north-and-the-atacama-desert/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iquique

• https://news.yahoo.com/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-fast-023315135.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

• https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment