The general public may want to make more efforts to reduce clothing consumption, but brands continue to produce more and more clothing. Too numerous, they often end up in open landfills, polluting the surrounding land and waters through their slow degradation. Among these heaps of fashion excesses, including fast fashion, is the Atacama Desert in Chile. Several documentaries have already shown the extent of the damage caused by the accumulation of clothing that abounds there, but new images allow us to make an even better budget.
A clothes dump visible from space
In fact, as just pointed out by Madame Figaro, a snapshot taken from space by SkyFi, an American company specializing in satellite images, shows the eerie immensity of this cemetery of clothes. In total, nearly 40,000 tons of clothing would accumulate in this wild Alto Hospicio landfill, where men, women and children sometimes come to dig up to try and resell a few items in good condition. A drop of water in an ocean of waste visible from space.
These are clothes from all over the world, especially from the West, so the responsibility is international. While the European Union has just adopted on May 22, 2023 the ban on destroying new unsold fabrics, shoes and accessories, we can wonder even more about the future of fashion items that are no longer wanted. Because even simply letting them rot away from home is no panacea. It is therefore ever more urgent to produce better, and above all to produce less.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
