CHILE-ENVIRONMENT-CLOTHES-RECYCLING

These photos show the dangerous consequences of fast fashion. Low prices for clothes push us to constantly buy fashionable novelties, while clothes that have gone out of “trends” are simply thrown away. But of course, dumps of unwanted clothes pose a threat to the environment.⁣ ⁣39,000 tons of clothing were left in the Atacama Desert! According to the AFP news agency, which published these pictures taken in September 2021, all these dumped objects are the result of fast fashion. It turned out that about 59,000 tons of clothes enter the Chilean port every year, two-thirds of which are taken to a landfill in the desert. “These clothes come from all over the world,” Alex Carreno says, a former seaport officer in the import zone. He shared that "since no one has paid the required amount to pick up the clothes, everything that is not sold in Santiago and is not sent to other countries remains in the free zone."⁣