Sharjah24 – AFP: A mountain of discarded clothing including Christmas sweaters and ski boots cuts a strange sight in Chile's Atacama, the driest desert in the world, which is increasingly suffering from pollution created by fast fashion.
The social impact of rampant consumerism in the clothing industry -- such as child labor in factories or derisory wages -- is well-known, but the disastrous effect on the environment is less publicized.
Chile has long been a hub of secondhand and unsold clothing, made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where it is resold around Latin America.
Some 59,000 tons of clothing arrive each year at the Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile.
Clothing merchants from the capital Santiago, 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) to the south, buy some, while much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But at least 39,000 tons that cannot be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the desert.
According to a 2019 UN report, global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, and the industry is "responsible for 20 percent of total water waste on a global level."
To make a single pair of jeans requires 7,500 liters (2,000 gallons) of water.
The same report said that clothing and footwear manufacturing contributes eight percent of global greenhouse gases, and that "every second, an amount of textiles equivalent to a garbage truck is buried or burnt."
Whether the clothing piles are left out in the open or buried underground, they pollute the environment, releasing pollutants into the air or underground water channels.
Clothing, either synthetic or treated with chemicals, can take 200 years to biodegrade and is as toxic as discarded tires or plastics.
Not all the clothing goes to waste: some of the poorest people from this region of 300,000 inhabitants pick through the dumps to find things they need or can sell in their local neighborhood.
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