The massive landfill of “fast fashion” clothing in the Atacama Desert is so large that satellites can clearly observe it.
Atacama Desert, Chile, hosts a growing “graveyard” of clothing. These are discarded or unused garments, primarily produced in Bangladesh or China and shipped to retail stores in the US, Europe, and Asia, later transported to Chile when unsold, Business Insider reported on May 23.
Satellite image showing the massive clothing waste in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. (Photo: Skyfi)
As of 2021, at least 39,000 tons of such clothing had accumulated in the Atacama Desert, according to AFP. These garments are mostly “fast fashion” —cheap clothing produced quickly in line with the latest trends.
SkyFi, a developer of satellite photo and video applications, shared high-resolution satellite images of this clothing graveyard on May 11. “The images have a resolution of 50 cm, classified as Very High Resolution, and were captured by satellite. They illustrate the enormity of the waste compared to the city below,” SkyFi stated.
This clothing is not sent to municipal landfills because it is non-biodegradable and often contains chemical products, according to Franklin Zepeda, founder of EcoFibra, a company that aims to reuse clothing by manufacturing insulation panels.
The mountain of unused clothing is located near the port of Iquique, approximately 1.6 km from some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city. The landfill sometimes attracts migrants and local women who come to search for items they can wear or sell.
The fast fashion industry contributes 2% – 8% of global carbon emissions, the United Nations reported in 2018. According to an article in Insider in 2019, nearly 85% of clothing products are discarded each year, and the production of fashion consumes a vast amount of water while polluting rivers and streams. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the UK estimates that approximately one truckload of clothing is burned and sent to landfills every second.
