From Rags to Riches: How Chile’s Desert Is Turning Trash into Treasure

Many people around the world recycle their old clothes, hoping they will be reused or given to someone in need. However, a surprising number of these clothes end up in a very unexpected place: the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Each year, about 39,000 tonnes of used clothing are dumped illegally in this desert. Chile has become one of the largest importers of second-hand clothing, and the items that cannot be sold are often abandoned in huge piles in the dry, empty landscape.

The city of Iquique is home to a special free-trade zone called Zofri, which stands for Zona Franca del Iquique. This area was created in 1975 to help the economy in northern Chile. Businesses in Zofri can import, store, and sell goods without paying customs duties or VAT. Used clothing has become one of the main imports, arriving from places like the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The clothes are sorted by local workers, mostly women, who separate them by quality. The best items are sold in local markets or exported to other Latin American countries, while the lower-quality clothes are sold at outdoor markets like La Quebradilla near Alto Hospicio.

At these markets, shoppers can find everything from T-shirts to jeans at very low prices. The market is busy, especially on weekends, as both locals and tourists look for bargains. However, not all the clothes are sold. The unsold items cannot be sent to the local landfill, which is only for household waste. Traders are supposed to either export the leftover clothes, pay taxes to sell them outside the free-trade zone, or send them to an authorized waste company. Since all these options cost money, some traders choose to dump or burn the clothes illegally in the desert.

This illegal dumping is a big problem for the local government. Miguel Painenahuel, who works in the planning department of Alto Hospicio, says it is very hard to stop the dumping because the desert is easy to reach with trucks. The town council uses patrols and cameras to try to catch the people responsible, but there are too many trucks and not enough resources to control the problem.

To address this issue, some people are looking for new solutions. Luis Martínez, the executive director of CircularTec, is leading a project to find ways to reuse and recycle unsold clothing. A new factory is being built by Bekir Conkur, a businessman who has been working in Chile for over 15 years. His company imports about 50 containers of clothes every month. The new factory will use machines to turn old clothes into fibers and felt, which can be used in products like mattresses, furniture, car interiors, and insulation.

The factory will not use water or chemicals and will be able to process 20 tonnes of clothes each day. Bekir is building the factory partly because of a new law in Chile called the Extended Producer Responsibility Law. This law will make companies responsible for what happens to their products after they are used. Clothing companies will have to help collect, reuse, recycle, or properly dispose of old clothes. Bekir hopes his investment in the factory will pay off by taking unwanted textiles from all over Chile and possibly from other countries in the future. This new approach could help reduce the amount of clothing dumped in the Atacama Desert and create new business opportunities at the same time.