In Chile, a garment dump in the Atacama desert

Mountains of clothes in the middle of the desert.

These images taken at the end of September by Martin Bernetti for AFP may surprise.

They are, however, very real.

In northern Chile, in the middle of the Atacama desert, pants, sweaters, rain boots or even après-ski are piling up in wild dumps, like the one located near Alto Hospicio, in the province of Iquique.

These used clothes come from all over the world: United States, Canada, Europe, Asia.

Why did they end up there?

Chile has specialized for forty years in the trade of second-hand clothing.

Each year, 59,000 tons of clothing arrive in the free zone of the port of Iquique, 1,800 km north of Santiago.

The bales are sorted there and then resold in second-hand stores in the country, or exported to other Latin American countries.

But faced with the exponential growth in the quantity of clothing produced in the world - the world production of clothing has doubled between 2000 and 2014 - the circuit is congested and textile waste is increasing.

In Alto Hospicio, a town on the outskirts of Iquique, around 39,000 tonnes of textiles are thus stored wildly.

Environmental consequences

The consequences are harmful for the environment.

Many clothes are indeed made of synthetic fabrics which can be highly toxic.

Whether buried underground or left in the open, their chemical decomposition, which can take decades, pollutes the air and groundwater.

In response, the Chilean government recently announced that the textile industry will soon be subject to the “

” law.

Companies importing clothing will have to take care of textile residues and facilitate their recycling.