Atacama Desert: Chile’s Fashion Landfill Graveyard

Let’s talk about something that shouldn’t even exist, a mountain range made of used clothes dumped in one of the driest places on Earth. Yes, it’s the Atacama Desert, Chile, a stunningly surreal stretch of land now known less for its Mars-like terrain and more for a fashion apocalypse visible from space. Every year, 39,000 to 60,000 tonnes of used garments, mostly from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, make their final stop here, with most being illegally dumped. The satellite images of this landfill went viral. Well, it’s not a good sign if you are able to spot landfills from space, is it?

Thanks to today’s cheap synthetic clothing materials like polyester, a large part of what’s dumped won’t decompose for 200 years, if at all. It just sits there, breaking into microplastics, poisoning the soil, and becoming a permanent reminder of our throwaway culture. 

(Image Credit: SKYFI Satellite Image of the Atacama desert)

The Mayor of Alto Hospicio, called it: "The backyard of the world." It is indeed a backyard where the West sends its guilt, driven by the greedy trend cycles and mass production.

The Atacama Fashion Week 2024

This Fashion Week, led by Desierto Vestido, a Chilean NGO focused on textile recycling, working together with Fashion Revolution Brazil and the Brazilian ad agency Artplan, in an effort to reveal the face of fast fashion and show the world what really goes into garment production.

Photographed by Maurício Nahas, models walk wearing discarded clothes amid the landfill piles. The collection is created entirely from garments found dumped in the desert. What made it even more striking? The fact that the runway wasn't a stage, it was the landfill itself.

(Image Credit: The Atacama Fashion Week, Photos by Maurício Nahas)

Theoretically, if regulations were introduced to ban the import or disposal of used clothing, would that be sufficient to solve the problem? NO.

Fast fashion brands still produce over 100 billion garments a year, often with unsustainable materials, outsourced labour, and minimal oversight. Many items are designed to fall apart in 5 to 10 wears. The business model is designed to be disposable.

Let’s say we ban used clothing exports or tighten import regulations. That might slow the flood, but it still doesn’t address the main problem:

Why are fast fashion retailers still producing billions of garments yearly, many of which are designed to fall apart in months?

What will it take to change consumer behaviour, which fuels this cycle of buy-wear-throw-repeat?

How do we create systems for repair, reuse, and circular design at large scale as global infrastructure?

The entire fast fashion system is faulty, from how clothes are made to why we buy them. Fast fashion has trained us to treat garments like single-use plastics. The Atacama Desert shows that nothing we discard truly disappears. The damage remains for centuries. If this is the consequence, the solution must go far beyond surface-level fixes. If the clothes we wear tell a story, it’s time we decide to change the narrative.