Child labor and inadequate wages are well-known issues of the fast fashion industry, but not many people are aware of the effects that the clothing industry has on the environment. In Chile, discarded clothing is accumulating in the Atacama Desert, where mountains of fast fashion leftovers dominate the landscape. In the past few years, Chile has become a hub for unsold clothing, where it is resold around Latin America after passing through Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Each year, around 59,000 tons of unsold or secondhand clothing arrive at the Iquique port in northern Chile. Some garments are bought by clothing merchants, while others are smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But what’s not sold or sent to other countries (at least 39,000 tons) ends up in rubbish dumps in the desert as no one pays the necessary tariffs to take it away. Clothing piles that are left out in the open or buried underground pollute the environment by releasing pollutants into the air or underground water. Clothing can take up to 200 years to biodegrade and is as toxic as plastics. The impact of clothing production has a huge impact on the environment. A UN report published in 2019 points out that the clothing industry is responsible for 20% of global water waste. For instance, making a single pair of jeans requires 7,500 liters of water. Moreover, the industry contributes to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Entrepreneur Franklin Zepeda wanted to find a solution to this problem. In 2018, he founded EcoFibra, a company that makes insulation panels with discarded clothing.
The problem is that the clothing is not biodegradable and has chemical products, so it is not accepted in the municipal landfills.
Franklin Zepeda, Entrepreneur
Rosario Hevia is the founder of Ecocitex, a company born in 2019 that creates yarn from pieces of discarded textiles and clothing without the use of water nor chemicals. According to Hevia, for many years no one seemed to care about the exorbitant amount of textile waste that was being generated. But now, people are starting to see the problem and question themselves.
