Theory

Description

Huge amounts of used and unsold clothes have piled up in the Atacama desert in Chile in recent years. A symbol of the hidden cost of fast fashion, they show the industry’s disastrous environmental impact.

Manuela Olivos lives in a hut surrounded by mountains of discarded clothes. She makes a living from this vast, fast-fashion dumping ground in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, collecting anything that she can sell. Much of it is unsold clothing from more economically developed countries, where the demands of the fast fashion industry have resulted in chronic over-production. The garments that end up here are usually made of synthetic fabrics that are non-biodegradable.

The desert dumping ground is an embarrassment to the authorities in nearby Alto Hospicio. New shipments of used clothing arrive every week. The business with used clothing is highly lucrative for dealers in the free trade zone, but only for them. It’s detrimental to the wider community, local officials state. Iquique, the provincial capital, used to be economically depressed. But then the Chilean government built a container port here and created the free trade zone known as "Zofri". 59,000 tonnes of used clothes are shipped here every year. According to estimates, up to 40 % of that is dumped - and ends up in the desert.

Many of the people who sift through the mountains of discarded clothes are refugees from Venezuela. They’re looking for clothes they can wear themselves and for anything they can sell. Among them there's André and his family, who are braving the midday heat on their way to Iquique, where they hope to find work. They still have another 200 kilometers to go and are exhausted.

Description

Fast fashion is cheap, worn briefly, then discarded, leaving behind mountains of used clothing. Producers and retailers promise sustainability and recycling, but how sincere is their promise to make new clothing from old?

Over 120 billion garments per year are produced worldwide, and the mountains of textile waste are growing accordingly. The fast fashion industry is responsible for a significant part of this. Where they once brought out four collections a year, cheap clothing chains now create up to 52 micro-collections annually. Environmental organizations have long criticized this waste of resources and the mountains of textile waste it produces. Greenpeace is demanding an end to our ‘addiction to fast fashion’. Fast fashion retailers promise their customers they will treat the used clothing sustainably, touting their recycling system. But the giant mounds of worn clothing are too much for second-hand traders to handle. The disposal system is about to collapse. The clothes end up being used as fuel to heat people’s homes. Which political measures are being taken to tackle the problematic flood of textile waste?