The Juice: Fast Fashion Clothing Dumps in Chilean Desert Threaten Environment

 

‘Fast Fashion’ Clothing Dumps in Chilean Desert Threaten Environment

Thought Question: What are some actions you could take to reduce the amount of clothes that end up in a landfill every year?

In Chile’s Atacama, the world’s driest desert, scavengers sort through mountains of Crocs, golf shirts, and many other forms of clothing searching for fashion gems that can be reused. Unfortunately for the environment, there aren’t enough waste pickers to recycle all of it.

That’s because this desert plateau stretching nearly 1,000 miles along Chile’s Pacific coast has become one of the world’s fastest-growing dumps for clothes. That growth is propelled by an explosion of discarded “fast fashion,” cheap yet fancy mass-produced clothing from all over the world.

According to a 2018 United Nations (UN) report, garment production doubled between 2000 and 2014 as consumers started buying 60% more clothing and wearing it half as long as they once did. The UN called the mushrooming problem “an environmental and social emergency.”

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