UN Report Highlights Urgent Need for Action in Atacama

The Atacama Desert is a bit of an oxymoron.

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The driest desert in the world is home to the largest natural supply of sodium nitrate and has soil similar to that of Mars. A rare blossoming of flowers encouraged Chile to name the region its 44th natural park in 2022. The 15-million-year-old plateau is renowned for stargazing, considering its high altitude, near-constant clear skies and freedom from light pollution.

It’s also far from deserted, as one of the world’s fastest-growing dumps of discarded clothes.

Dubbed “the great fashion garbage patch,” the garment graveyard has reached such epic proportions that the sprawling textile mountains are visible from space. A new report from the United Nations has confirmed what satellite imagery app SkyFi captured last year: The rise of fast fashion , with its rampant rotation, has caused the worldwide trade of used clothing to increase seven times over the past 40 years.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe ( UNECE ) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have joined forces on a report that hopes to serve as a “wake-up call” for policymakers, fashion industry stakeholders and consumers alike.

In the joint, 92-page report titled “Reversing direction in the used clothing crisis : global, European and Chilean perspectives,” the two commissions illustrate how extensive volumes of textile waste end up in the Atacama Desert . This desert plateau in the north of Chile amassed most of the 124,000 tons of secondhand textile waste that entered Chile in 2022 alone, per Chilean National Customs Department data. This waste releases microplastics and chemicals , transforming the landscape into a “veritable” open-air landfill .

“When did we normalize throwing clothes away? As the world, mostly the global north, has produced and consumer fashion at an unrelenting rate, a handful of countries—mainly in the global south—have become cemeteries for the world’s unloved clothes,” said Lily Cole , climate activist and advisor to UNECE. “While visiting the Atacama Desert , my attention was brought to the textile mountains and the shifting cultural, economic and political landscapes that birthed them. Consumer awareness is very helpful, yet, ultimately, we need policies to curb systemic trends , which is why this report and its recommendations are so necessary.”

By examining the secondhand clothing trade between Europe and Chile, the two United Nations groups hope to encourage industry players of both importing and exporting countries to reevaluate the current state of fashion in favor of a more circular economy . Based on fieldwork conducted in Chile’s Tarapacá region secondhand clothing markets, the study seeks to develop policy recommendations to enhance the global used clothing trade’s economic, social and environmental impacts.

Per the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database ( UN Comtrade ), the European Union (30 percent), China (16 percent) and the United States (15 percent) were the leading exporters of discarded clothing in 2021. Asia (28 percent, predominantly Pakistan ), Africa (19 percent, especially Ghana and Kenya ) and Latin America (16 percent, mostly Chile and Guatemala ) were the leading importers of said waste.

This has been facilitated by the advent of cheap synthetic fibers and trade liberalization enabling excessive exportation of said low-quality used clothing to countries with low-wage labor, the groups said. The resulting textile mountains—found not just in Chile but in Ghana, Kenya and Pakistan as well—are mostly comprised of minimally valuable, difficult-to-separate blended-fiber garments. Because recycling or reuse opportunities are rare with these low-value textiles, the importing countries struggle to use them in economically and environmentally beneficial ways, the report said.

“The textile mountains reveal just some of the broader ‘negative externalities’ not currently priced in our economic system,” Cole said. “Our economy does not factor in the true costs of manufacturing —whether, for example, the impacts of chemical pollution, greenhouse gases or excess waste—to our wider society and the environment, now and in the future.”

So, why is this happening?

Simply put, those exporting countries struggle to effectively deal with used clothing, the study suggests, so they end up exporting their textile waste to developing countries .

Take the EU, for example. Only 15-20 percent of disposed textiles are collected in Europe. Both the reusable and non-reusable textiles collected are sent to manual sorting hubs in Germany , the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom, where a predominantly women-based workforce sorts out items suitable for resale in Europe. About half of what’s collected is downcycled to be used for insulation, for example. Only 0.1 percent is recycled into a higher-value output (such as new clothing), while the rest is shipped off.

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“This reflects the fact that, of the 55 percent of collecting clothing that’s reusable, only 5 percentage points have a value on secondhand markets in the EU, while 50 percentage points have a value on export markets,” the report said.

For reference, the EU has tripled its used clothing exports over the past two decades, from 550,000 to 1.7 million tons. Europe (including the UK) accounts for more than a third of global used clothing exports, and that share will continue to grow as collection rates continue to rise.

Yet the EU is crawling toward a circular economy. The EU Circular Economy Action Plan ( CEAP ), for example, was adopted in 2020, while the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles took effect in 2022 and, a year later, the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation ( ESPR ) was approved. But these policies have yet to “bear fruit” in a meaningful way, the commissions said, as there’s “too little dialogue” between sorters and recyclers, a lack of recycling capacity and insufficient infrastructure for large-scale digital sorting.

“The used clothes global market is constantly growing, and with it, its negative impacts. The textile industry has a key responsibility to adopt more sustainable practices, exporters and importers to adopt relevant policy decisions to foster traceability , circularity and sustainability,” said Tatiana Molcean, UNECE’s executive secretary. “UN/CEFACT policy recommendations and standards will support this transition. And, of course, we all have a role to play, as consumers , to make sustainable choices.”

Conversely, importing countries struggle to effectively deal with the large inflows of low-quality used clothing.

While most countries in Latin America (including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) have introduced clothing import bans , Chile has not. As a result of levying zero tariffs, it has become one of the top 10 importers in the world, taking first place in Latin America. In 2021, Chile received 126,000 tons (over 200 million pounds) of textiles. Most arrived via the Tarapacá region, while 40 percent entered through the northern port of Iquique to be manually sorted ( primarily by women ) into first, second and third quality. They are then assembled into bundles, with about 5 percent (first quality) reexported and 20 percent (second quality) sold throughout Chile. The remaining 75 percent (third quality), deemed non-reusable, are moved to the port’s surrounding areas, many ending up in landfills near the Atacama Desert.

The study also highlighted that liaisons—those seeking to buy good-quality used clothes from companies at the Free Trade Zone of Iquique (ZOFRI) to resell at local markets—can only purchase large quantities of mostly third-quality clothes mixed with a few first- and second-quality items. This trade generates both formal and informal income for national and migrant populations, so it must be considered when redefining public policies.

“To address the environmental and social issues of used textile trade, the EU and Chile must work together on creating robust regulatory frameworks ,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, UNECLAC’s executive secretary. “A partnership between the European Union and Chile could pioneer innovative approaches to regulate and reduce the impact of secondhand textile trade, including by setting global standards for the trade of used textiles, focusing on sustainability and social responsibility.”

Both exporting and importing countries need intervention. As such, UNECE and ECLAC set forth a series of bilateral recommendations through the lens of the EU and Chile, respectively.

For the EU, the organizations suggest pursuing domestic policy action. This includes designing with circularity in mind , introducing an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme, expanding the number of sorting and recycling plants, incentivizing and facilitating increased levels of transparency and traceability, taking measures against fast fashion and running awareness-raising campaigns for consumers.

For Chile, the groups have a two-pronged approach: minimizing future imports of textile waste and addressing the harmful effects of previous (and any future) imports of said waste. Setting up custom controls, improving customs procedures at ZOFRI, adopting administrative measures at the port of Iquique and establishing tax-incentive schemes for recycling projects would address the first prong. Improving the legal framework for waste management, implementing a regional solid waste control plan involving inspections of landfills and dumps, and accelerating the adoption of the Chilean draft law on the environmental quality of soils tackles the second prong.

The report also recommends making changes to international trade agreements, such as the 2023 Interim Trade Agreement between the EU and Chile, to develop minimum EU criteria for secondhand clothing exports and mutually agree on the definitions (see: differences) of “textile waste” versus “secondhand clothing” and put mechanisms in place to track their trade flows. This agreement could then be used as a template for other trade agreements between various importer-exporter relationships to, ultimately, reduce global trade in textile waste.

“A multi-level approach that is well coordinated between exporting and importing countries and that involves national and subnational authorities alongside affected communities is needed,” the report said. “In the end, systemic solutions are needed to reduce the volume of new clothes put on the market, ensure clothes are designed to be free of toxic chemicals, and encourage longer use phases and multiple cycles of reuse—a circular economy for fashion.”

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