Whether the clothing piles are left out in the open or buried underground, they pollute the environment, releasing pollutants into the air or underground water channels.Ĭlothing, either synthetic or treated with chemicals, can take 200 years to biodegrade and is as toxic as discarded tyres or plastic materials.Ĭhile, the richest country in South America, is known for the voracious consumerism of its inhabitants. The same report said clothing and footwear manufacturing contributes 8 percent of global greenhouse gases, and that “every second, an amount of textiles equivalent to a garbage truck is buried or burned”. To make a single pair of jeans requires 7,500 litres (2,000 gallons) of water.

Water wasteĪccording to a 2019 UN report, global clothing production doubled between 20, and the industry is “responsible for 20 percent of total water waste on a global level”. “I wanted to stop being the problem and start being the solution,” he told AFP about the firm he created in 2018. “The problem is that the clothing is not biodegradable and has chemical products, so it is not accepted in the municipal landfills,” said Franklin Zepeda, the founder of EcoFibra, a company that makes insulation panels using discarded clothing. “What is not sold to Santiago nor sent to other countries stays in the free zone” as no one pays the necessary tariffs to take it away. “This clothing arrives from all over the world,” Alex Carreno, a former employee in the port’s import area, told the AFP news agency.

But at least 39,000 tonnes that cannot be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the desert. Some 59,000 tonnes of clothing arrive each year at the Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile.Ĭlothing merchants from the capital Santiago, 1,800km (1,100 miles) to the south, buy some, while much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. The social effect of rampant consumerism in the clothing industry – such as child labour in factories or derisory wages – is well-known, but the disastrous effect on the environment is less publicised.Ĭhile has long been a hub of second-hand and unsold clothing, made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where it is resold around Latin America. A mountain of discarded clothing, including Christmas sweaters and ski boots, cuts a strange sight in Chile’s Atacama, the driest desert in the world, which is increasingly suffering from pollution created by fast fashion.

Boom beach war factory