by Clad in layers of denim, Sadlin Charles walks the sandy center between piles of discarded clothes and tires in Chile’s Atacama desert. His suit is made from items found in the surrounding rubbish heaps, which are so large they can be seen from space. Almost all of this waste came from countries thousands of miles away, including the US, China, South Korea and the UK.
60,000 tons of used clothes are sent to Chile every year. According to the latest UN figures, Chile is the third largest importer of used clothing in the world. Some of these clothes are resold on second-hand markets, but at least 39,000 tonnes are illegally dumped in the Atacama desert. The desert is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, famous for its other beauty around the world and stargazing, but for those who live near the dumping sites it is now a place of destruction.
“This place is being used as a global sacrifice zone where waste comes from different parts of the world and ends up around the municipality of Alto Hospicio,” says Ángela Astudillo, co-founder of Desierto Dresses, an NGO whose aim is raise awareness about the environmental impact of waste. “It builds up in different areas, it is burnt and it is also buried.
“It’s the stigma that has affected us the most, because we are portrayed as one of the dirtiest and ugliest places in the world.”
Astudillo, 27, lives five minutes’ drive from one of about 160 dumps in the area. She sees trucks full of rubbish driving past and regularly breathes in smoke from the fires started to burn the clothes. She has received threats for her work to document the problem.
“It’s sad because this has been happening for a long time and the people who live here can’t do anything because it puts us at risk. The only thing we can do is deny what is happening, and stand idly by,” she says.
To counter this feeling of powerlessness, her organization teamed up with Fashion Revolution Brazil, a fashion activism movement, and Artplan, a Brazilian advertising agency, to stage a fashion show amidst the trash to raise awareness of the reality in which she lives, and to show what can be done from the waste.
Maya Ramos, a stylist and visual artist from the Brazilian state of São Paulo, designed a collection worn by eight Chilean models in the show in April, known as Atacama fashion week 2024. Plans for the 2025 event are already underway.
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Brazilian stylist Maya Ramos designed the collection – around the theme of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water – from items dumped on the site
From afar, Ramos, 32, tasked Astudillo and others with collecting items of clothing from the dumps that would fit the theme of the four elements – earth, fire, air and water. She later traveled to the Atacama desert to put together the outfits for the show and spent 24 hours cutting and sewing the collected clothes, as well as others she found, by hand.
Each outfit symbolizes different types of pollution and the impact on the environment. The gray shirt that Charles modeled embodies the pollution caused by rampant clothing production. The denim cut-outs, layered like discarded waste, are a pile of clothes covered in desert dust, and the belt on the denim vest represents the constraints this environmental injustice places on the lives of the people living in the area.
“There are people living in poverty and it’s precarious. This is an urgent situation,” says Ramos. “The problem is bigger than fashion and the supply chain. It is a societal problem. People, due to a lack of connection with nature, are consuming more than they need at an unrestrained pace.”
On average, each consumer buys 60% more clothes than 20 years ago and 92m tonnes of textile waste is created every year. Every second, the equivalent of a truckload of clothes ends up in a landfill somewhere around the world.
According to the UN, the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world, responsible for about 20% of the planet’s wastewater and about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions.
As fashion has increased – cheap clothes bought and discarded as trends change – the number of clothes being produced has increased, while the quality has decreased.
A common way to dispose of clothes in developed countries is to give them to charity shops. But many of these donations end up in countries of the global south, where there is a large trade in second-hand clothes and the authorities that receive these loads cannot handle the amount.
In Accra, the capital of Ghana, there is a tangled web of clothes on the shore, and mountains of textile waste have grown in another area of the city. The disturbing scene in the north of Chile has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. In 2023, the images of the worn clothes as seen from space went viral.
One of the most important duty-free ports in South America is in the city of Iquique, in northern Chile. When clothes arrive, importers collect and the workers sort the garments.
Unwanted clothing ends up in the hands of truck drivers who send it a few miles to dumps outside Alto Hospicio, a growing municipality with a population of about 130,000 people. Here, it goes through another cycle of sorting and resale in small shops or at La Quebradilla, a large open-air market with a large trade in second-hand clothes.
In Chile it is forbidden to dump textile waste in legal landfills because it creates soil instability, so things that don’t sell are destined for the desert. Brands commonly found amongst the sand include Zara, H&M, Calvin Klein, Levi’s, Wrangler, Nike and Adidas. Most of them are made of polyester, a plastic-based fabric that takes up to 200 years to decompose. When these garments are burned, they release toxic fumes, which harm the soil, the ozone layer and the health of the local population.
Fernanda Simon, director of Fashion Revolution Brazil, says that there is an element of environmental racism and colonialism in systems that see products being consumed in the global north before being thrown out in the global south. The most vulnerable populations are affected; in Alto Hospicio, one of the poorest cities in Chile, people are inhaling gas as clothes are burned.
“Atacama is one example,” she says. “We have this beautiful place that many people go to. Now, almost 50,000 tons of clothes are thrown out there. The clothes come from countries in the global north.
“We need systemic change.”
Local authorities have introduced fines of 180,000 pesos (£150) for people caught dumping waste in the desert, says Astudillo. But she says that only areas close to people live are monitored, few fines are issued and dumping continues unabated.
The country has implemented the “Extended producer responsibility law” which establishes a legal framework for waste management, with importers being responsible for the waste they generate. However, it still does not include clothing and textiles.
Meanwhile, the clothes keep coming and the waste keeps building.
