Fast fashion clothes from Zara, Shein rot in Chilean desert
An illegal dump site full of denim bleached by the harsh sun in the Atacama Desert on the outskirts of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile in May (Yuko Kawasaki)
ALTO HOSPICIO, Chile—An eerie site awaits those driving past this northern city toward a sprawl of the Atacama Desert.
There, a 'graveyard' of discarded clothing, shoes, bags and other unwanted items sit layered on a barren expanse of red-orange dunes.
A closer look at this manmade ecosystem reveals tags from well-known fast fashion and drop-shipping brands—Spain's Zara and China's exclusively online Shein.
Some garments have been torched, the wind kicking up dark ash. An odor similar to scorched plastic rises from the burn site.
'We have many places like this in the desert,' said Jean Karla Zambrana, a co-founder of the desert dressed in clothes, a private Alto Hospicio-based group that promotes recycling clothing. 'It is estimated that 40,000 tons had been dumped in the desert by 2022. It came from all around the world.'
A DUTY-FREE PORT
A 30-minute drive from the site is the duty-free Iquique Port, acting as the Pacific gateway to one of the world's largest dumping grounds for the global fashion industry's castoffs.
The Chilean government designated the port in the city of Iquique and the surrounding area as a free trade zone in the 1970s to stimulate the lackluster economy.
While other countries ban imports on used garments out of concerns for hygiene and environmental impact, Chilean importers embrace them, making the used apparel trade a roaring business.
Shipments of unsold and older clothing continue to arrive at Iquique Port from the United States, Europe and many other parts of the world, with the cargo weighing in at 40,000-60,000 tons annually.
A large chunk of what arrives is worn out, unwearable trash, however.
Zambrana, 31, said illegally dumping huge amounts of discarded clothing items in the Atacama Desert has become routine for importers and retailers to skip the cost of contracting with a dealer for proper disposal.
She added that the geography adds to the temptation as a nearby road puts the sands within easy access of Iquique and Alto Hospicio.
Some importers and retailers set fire to the clothes after unloading them, afraid of being caught.
'Toxic gases from burn sites reach the neighborhood, contaminating the air,' Zambrana said of the chemicals used to make and dye fabrics. 'Locals are suffering.'
Satellite images from Google Earth confirm that parts of the Atacama, which stretches more than 1,000 kilometers from north to south along the Andes, have transformed into impromptu waste sites.
Images from 2007, meanwhile, show no discernable mounds of offloaded clothing in the desert. Dark spots believed to be where used garments were burned begin appearing in images from the 2010s.
The size of these dark spots and dump spots has only expanded based on images from this year.
SOLD BY THE KILO
Chile's thriving secondhand clothing trade is on full display at a huge open-air market near Alto Hospicio.
The market is lined with a seemingly endless number of stalls selling all sorts of garments from about 70 yen (50 cents), with labels ranging from Lacoste and Ivanka Trump to Forever 21 and Gap.
Jery Managuel, a Bolivian vendor, said he has seen Japanese brands being sold.
Managuel, 38, purchases clothes to sell at his stall from importers near Iquique Port, paying $150 (about 20,000 yen) for 45 kilograms of garments. The purchases are separated into three categories: new clothing with tags, used clothes in good condition and garbage.
'I take items that did not sell to the desert each month to incinerate them,' Managuel said.
Illegal offloading is an ongoing headache for Alto Hospicio authorities.
Edgar Ortega, who heads the environmental department, said the city, which has a population of about 200,000, has installed 220 surveillance cameras near the dump sites to prevent would-be perpetrators.
It exposed more than 400 violations in 2024, slapping a fine on transgressors.
Alto Hospicio officials are preparing to add 200 more cameras and assign an additional 20 individuals to patrols as part of its crackdown.
But Ortega, 36, admitted that what the municipality can do is limited because the city lacks ample financial resources.
While he credits the duty-free port for reinvigorating the regional economy and creating jobs, Ortega also pointed out that the arrival of staggering amounts of textile waste from around the world has spiraled into a problem the city is not equipped to handle.
'Twenty to 30 percent of the garments shipped to Iquique wind up in the desert as waste,' he said. 'I suspect that the clothing was exported to Chile for the purpose of disposing it in this country. We have been forced to get rid of worthless clothing.'
QUANTITY SANS QUALITY
One clothing store near the port sells Zara pieces from last season, but these items being new and with tags do not excuse the company in Paulin Silva's eyes.
A lawyer specializing in environmental issues, Silva blames fast fashion entities such as Zara for exponentially increasing textile waste by relying on a business model that dramatically cuts the lead time of a product advancing from the design phase to store shelves.
'Mass production of inexpensive apparel has been accelerated globally to quickly catch up with the latest trends, ending up with huge amounts of inventory and used clothes,' she said. 'Unwanted clothing from other countries arrives here to sort out sellable items. The rest goes to the dump sites.'
Silva, 37, said there was a true balance in supply and demand regarding the clothing market when she was a child.
'I remember that good-quality attire was sold in reasonable quantities and things sold out just past noon,' she said. 'But today, garments of shoddy quality arrive in this country in volumes 10 to 30 times greater than before.'
A TRUCK EVERY SECOND
A World Economic Forum report and other data noted that global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, resulting in more than 100 billion pieces of apparel annually.
In contrast, consumers wear new purchases for half as long as they previously did.
A fiscal 2022 report by Japan's Environment Ministry found that Japanese buy 18 items and discard 15 per capita each year.
An average Japanese owns 35 articles of clothing that they do not wear, according to the report.
Throwing away clothes has a considerable impact on the environment due to the presence of various chemicals used in clothing production.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared 'Earth is a fashion victim' when he called for urgent action to reduce textile waste on the International Day of Zero Waste observed on March 30.
A U.N. estimate showed 'every second, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothing is incinerated or sent to a landfill.'
Chile is not alone in its plight. Ghana and India are also grappling with their own mountains of trashed clothes from foreign shores.
'The world has been flooded with an amount of clothing that exceeds individual needs because of the rise of fast fashion, which is prospering under capitalism,' Silva said.
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