From the outskirts of Alto Hospicio, a city in northern Chile, a mountain of discarded clothing sprawls across the Atacama Desert, so large that its outline can be seen from space. Satellite imagery confirms what locals have witnessed for years: more than 60,000 tons of unwanted garments, much of it shipped from Europe, now form a growing textile landfill. The United Nations has labeled it an “environmental and social emergency for the planet.” The scale of the accumulation reflects a wider mismatch between the volume of clothing entering Chile and the market’s capacity to resell it.
The clothing arrives in Chile as part of the global trade in second-hand textiles. Information from a 2024 United Nations report, the European Union is the world’s largest exporter of used clothing, accounting for 30% of global exports. The United Kingdom follows at 16%, and the United States at 15%. Each year, nearly 450 million EU residents buy an average of 26 kilos of textiles and discard 11 kilos. A impressive portion ultimately travels thousands of kilometers, ending up under the relentless Atacama sun. A separate sector analysis estimates that global textile waste totals about 92 million tonnes a year and could reach 148 million tonnes by 2030.
How Clothes End Up in the Desert
The journey begins with bales of used clothing leaving Europe and arriving at the port of Iquique, next to a duty-free zone that serves as a distribution point for Chilean and other Latin American markets. Importers bring the garments to Alto Hospicio, hoping to sell them locally or distribute them elsewhere in the region. Many items, often low-quality or lacking commercial value, fail to find buyers. Desierto Vestido cofounder Bastián Barria Acevedo has described the economics behind the trade: selling only 20% to 30% of a container can make an import profitable, while the unsold remainder may be dumped or burned. When resale is not possible, the waste can be abandoned in the desert, beyond the reach of ordinary disposal systems.
The scale of the problem is staggering. Figures reported for 2022 put Chile’s used-clothing imports at approximately 124,000 tonnes. Around 75% of the clothing reportedly could not be reused, while only about 1% of the resulting textile waste was recovered. January 2026 data cited in reporting puts Iquique’s annual receipts at between 120,000 and 180,000 tons, making Chile the world’s fourth-largest importer of second-hand apparel. These figures cover different measures and periods, but together show how a large inflow of garments with limited resale value can create a large disposal burden. Chile has also been ranked among the leading recipients of textile waste per capita, at 5.46 kilograms per person annually.
Brands Among the Waste
Investigations by the NGO Ekō and the Chilean group Desierto Vestido have identified clothing from brands such as H&M, Zara, Hugo Boss, Adidas, Levi’s, Old Navy, Under Armour, Tommy Hilfiger, and Nike among the heaps. The piles hold everything from Christmas sweaters to ski boots, and some items still bear their original tags. But the presence of well-known brands does not mean the clothing is reusable. Much of it is classified as third-rate or unsellable, reflecting the consequences of fast fashion and the limits of the global second-hand trade.
The dump first drew global notice in 2020, when local activists published striking photographs of the site. Later analysis using images from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus program tracked the dump’s expansion from November 2016 to November 2024, confirming that the area covered by textile waste continues to grow.
Burning Clothes, Spreading Pollution
To reduce the volume, some clothing is buried or burned by informal operators. Fires melt synthetic fabrics and plastics, leaving a dark residue on the ground. Activist Bastián Barria described the result: “It looks like solidified oil, but it’s actually the remains of clothing fused by fire.”
Most synthetic textiles contain polyester derived from petroleum. When burned, they release toxic compounds into the air and potentially into groundwater. The Scientific Plastic Pollution Alliance of Chile and Desierto Vestido have documented that burning clothes and plastics together creates chemical mixtures with unpredictable health effects. Smoke from the fires disrupts daily life in nearby neighborhoods, forcing residents to stay indoors and seal their homes. Alto Hospicio’s mayor, Patricio Ferreira, summed up local frustration: “We feel like our land has been sacrificed. We are the world’s trash.”
The city’s reputation has also suffered. Karla Aviles of Desierto Vestido says Alto Hospicio is now associated online with videos portraying it as one of the world’s most unpleasant places, a notoriety its residents never sought. The Atacama crisis is part of a broader international pattern: nearly one million tonnes of used clothing are shipped annually to countries in the Global South, where limited resale prospects can shift disposal costs onto importing communities.
Legal Action and New Regulations
Mounting public pressure has reached the courts. In 2025, the First Environmental Court of Antofagasta found the Chilean state responsible for failing to prevent or monitor illegal dumping of textile waste on public land in Alto Hospicio, and ordered a ten-year environmental remediation plan. The ruling is not final: the State Defense Council has appealed to the Supreme Court, leaving the ultimate outcome unresolved. The decision addresses state responsibility in this specific case, but does not guarantee the immediate removal of the thousands of tons already dumped or buried.
Chile has also brought textiles into its Extended Producer Responsibility structure, known as Ley REP. In June 2025, the Ministry of the Environment designated textiles a priority product under the system established by Law No. 20,920. Producers and importers must register and declare products placed on the market, while mandatory textile collection and recovery targets were still being developed in the policy structure described at the time. The approach is intended to share responsibility among producers, importers, consumers, and waste managers instead of leaving disposal costs solely to municipalities or informal operators.
Chile’s environmental regulator, the Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente, has used Law No. 20,920 to initiate sanctioning proceedings over producer-responsibility obligations in the packaging sector. The proceedings include retailer Flores y Cía S.A. and collective management organization ReSimple Domiciliario. These cases do not concern the Atacama textile dump, but show the broader REP structure being applied through administrative enforcement. According to the University of Chile’s Sustainability Observatory, about 70% of post-consumer clothing is donated or discarded, while only 1% is recycled, a challenge for any new regulation.
The crisis has grown alongside the global trade in used clothing. A United Nations report says the rise of fast fashion and constant collection turnover have multiplied second-hand clothing flows sevenfold over the past four decades. Chile’s proposed circular-textile strategy to 2040 sets out a longer-term approach focused on ecodesign, reuse, repair, material recovery, and technological innovation.
Some private and public initiatives are trying to repurpose or treat the waste. The company EcoFibra manufactures insulation panels from abandoned clothing, but faces obstacles because chemical residues prevent the textiles from being treated as regular municipal waste. Separately, researchers at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María are developing a pilot to test bacteria and fungi capable of biodegrading textile fibers. The Valparaíso Regional Government’s Regional Fund for Productivity and Development is financing the project, which envisages initial prototypes in Casablanca and at the National Customs Service. The same regional report estimated that Valparaíso generated about 57,000 tonnes of textile waste in 2025. Meanwhile, new bales from European wardrobes continue to arrive in Atacama each week, underscoring the scale and persistence of the problem.
