Read at 3 different speeds

Fast fashion's slow, dry decay - 18th February 2021

In Chile, the Earth's driest desert is becoming a sea of discarded textiles. This clothing slowly poisoning the Atacama Desert is fashion waste from Asian, European and US markets.

Chile's long been a hub for secondhand and unsold clothing, where the continent's clothing merchants pick out quality items to resell. What remains - over 39,000 tonnes annually - is simply dumped in the desert.

Since many items are synthetic or chemically treated, they degrade extremely slowly, taking up to 200 years. In the process, they contaminate the land and cause wider problems, as Moyra Rojas, the Regional Secretary of the Environment Ministry, describes.

Moyra Rojas: "These small scale rubbish dumps generate some fire incidents, which obviously produce air pollution. And some are also located near populated areas."

Awareness of the ecological crisis caused by fast fashion in the region is increasing. Franklin Zepeda has founded EcoFibra to find a useful purpose for the waste.

Franklin Zepeda: "The waste is what used to go to the desert rubbish dump and now we are using it as a raw material to make our thermal insulation panels."

According to a 2019 UN report, clothing production in 2014 was double that of the year 2000. Clothes manufacturing produces 20 percent of water waste and 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Despite this, our appetite for fast fashion is seemingly undiminished. CEO Rosario Hevia of Ecocitex, a company making yarn out of discarded textiles, believes that the only way forward is education.

Rosario Hevia: "The main solution to eliminating textile waste in Chile is to educate people about reducing their consumption of unnecessary textiles, and to take charge of extending the lifespan of it - the clothing."

Meanwhile, the poor and migrants from Venezuela scour the piles of waste to salvage what they can for themselves and their families.