In Chile, a dump of clothes in the middle of the Atacama desert

By Clémentine Maligorne and AFP agency Published , Updated

In Chile, a dump of clothes in the middle of the desert

IN IMAGES - Faced with the exponential quantity of clothing manufactured in the world, Chile, which specializes in the trade of second-hand clothing, finds itself overwhelmed with used textiles. The consequences can be harmful to the environment.

Mountains of clothes in the middle of the desert. These images taken at the end of September by Martin Bernetti for AFP may surprise you. They are, however, very real. In the north of Chile, in the middle of the Atacama Desert, pants, sweaters, rain boots or even après-ski are piling up in wild dumps, such as the one located near Alto Hospicio, in the province of Iquique. These used clothes come from all over the world: United States Canada, Europe, Asia.

Why did they land there? Chile has specialized for forty years in the second-hand clothing trade. Each year, 59,000 tons of clothing arrive in the free zone of the port of Iquique, 1,800 km north of Santiago. The bales are sorted there and then resold in second-hand stores in the country, or exported to other Latin American countries.

But faced with the exponential growth in the quantity of clothing produced in the world - global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014 - the circuit is clogged and textile waste is increasing. In Alto Hospicio, a municipality in the suburbs of Iquique, around 39,000 tonnes of textiles are thus stored illegally.

Environmental consequences

The consequences are harmful to the environment. Many clothes are indeed made of synthetic fabrics which can be highly toxic. Whether they are buried underground or left in the open air, their chemical decomposition, which can take decades, pollutes the air and groundwater.

Faced with this, the Chilean government recently announced that the textile industry will soon be subject to the “Extended Producer Responsibility” law. Companies that import clothing will have to take care of textile residues and facilitate their recycling.