FASHION’S dirty secret
There’s a vast landfill in Chile full of dumped clothes…
Simon Reeve heads to the driest desert on Earth, as Simon Reeve’s
South America concludes this week. The Atacama Desert in Chile is 40,000 square miles of sand, red rock and arid mountains. But it also hides a horrible secret. Close to the city of Iquique is an enormous landfill site packed with thousands of tonnes of clothes, including some items with their labels still attached.
‘It’s basically a mountain of used clothes dumped illegally, creating a huge landfill,’ explains Simon. ‘Traders import bales of recycled clothes from Europe and the US. They then resell them across the continent. ‘But due to the explosion in fast fashion, there’s just so much that lots are also dumped in the desert. It just shows how wasteful we’ve become.’ Leaving the desert behind, Simon heads further south through Patagonia, where he meets the indigenous Mapuche people, who have launched a dangerous campaign of sabotage against the farming and logging companies that they claim have stolen their land.
He also learns how vast salmon farms are polluting the seas off the coast of Chile, destroying the livelihoods of local fisherman, before ending his journey in Ushuaia, which is the most-southerly city on the planet and home to a vast population of sea lions.
‘I’ve seen so much destruction travelling through the Americas, but also so much beauty,’ says Simon. ‘I believe there is hope.’