Chile’s Big Problem is a Mountain of Clothing

National Geographic is an anthropological and geographical magazine that allows readers to explore the nature and cultures of the world. It provides a window to the wonders of the world. Or, as with the publication’s recent article, it provides an insight into how the wonders of the world are being destroyed by climate change.

Photo: Martin Bernetti via Insider

In an article on Chile’s Atacama Desert, John Bartlett illustrates what is being called “the great fashion garbage patch,” a mountain range of discarded textiles that have been carted in from all over the world, picked through, and cast aside. 

Chile has a duty free port in Iquique, which is a tax-free point of entry for trade goods that is intended to encourage economic activity. Since the port was established in 1975, Chile has become one of the world’s biggest importers of used clothing. As this industry evolved, the zone also became one of the primary points for the sorting of textile waste. This means that Chile basically took on the role of recycling the textile waste of the entire world.

Since the boom of fast fashion, the world has been producing clothing at a completely unsustainable rate. Even with a massive increase in consumption and a decrease in the longevity of clothing, about three fifths of clothing still ends up in a landfill or is burned within a year of production. 

Image via Phys

There are efforts being made in Chile to reduce the amount of waste. One startup called Ecicitex, based in Santiago, takes used clothing and transforms it into yarn. The Chilean environmental ministry is attempting to categorize textiles as one of the types of waste that producers and importers are accountable for. 

Even if this happened, however, that waste would need to go somewhere. Even if Chile could take all of its current and accumulating textile waste and recycle it in some way, clothing would still be produced at completely unsustainable rates. The waste that winds up in the Atacama desert is but a small fraction of textile waste; most of it winds up in similar piles of garbage in South Asia or Africa, where mountains of clothing are now accepted as part of the landscape. The only true solution to this problem is to drastically reduce the amount of clothing being produces; the only step that we as the consumers can reliably take is to quick consuming fast fashion.