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Garbage dump in the Atacama desert: everything burned in a fire with a high environmental cost

Garbage dump in the Atacama desert: everything burned in a fire with a high environmental cost

A few kilometers from Iquique, in the heart of Atacama Desert, piled up mountains of discarded second-hand clothes, which ended up in that improvised dump that caught fire, although the causes are unknown, and emits toxic gases as garments are broken down by fire.

This clandestine garbage dump was enlarged by the 59,000 tons of clothing discarded who arrive each year in Chile —the largest importer of second-hand clothing in Latin America— through the free zone of the port of Iquique, 1,800 kilometers north of Santiago. About 39,000 tons end up there, without being resold.

The fire, whose causes are being investigated, complicated the populations living in the dump, who make a living selling those discarded clothes and, furthermore, the smoke was reaching the nearby citiespolluting the air in large sectors of Iquique.

The textile wall

Chile is one of the main destinations of clothing made in Asia and worn in Europe or the United States before being quickly discarded. Every day hundreds of containers of used clothing enter the country and more than 50% of the goods that enter are deposited in this dump.

In this way, that area of ​​the Chilean desert became a dump for what is known as “fast fashion”: clothes of different qualities whose useful life lasts a short time. According to Greenpeace, this term refers to large volumes of clothing produced by the fashion industryas a product of trends and the “need” for innovation, which contributes to putting millions of garments on the market and encouraging consumers to replace their personal inventory at an accelerated rate.

The high environmental cost

A 2019 UN report established that world clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014. In this framework, the textile industry is responsible for 20 percent of all water waste worldwide. An example: to make a single pair of jeans, 7,500 liters of water are needed.

In addition, clothing is a product that can take 200 years to biodegrade, and is as toxic as discarded tires or plastics. Its manufacture, along with that of footwear, contributes eight percent to global greenhouse gases.

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