World’s Driest Desert Seen From Space Reveals Weird Greyish Mountains- Turns Out, It’s a Manmade Blunder

Nature is paying the cost of fast fashion. Humans love to indulge in some satisfying retail therapy hopping from one clothing store to the other. In the process, people barely stop to think about the environmental expense of their leisurely habits and splurge on their favorite brands, which are basically big corporations making money off underpaid laborers in Bangladesh and China. The production of fast fashion is problematic on so many levels. Now, a pile of discarded clothes, almost as big as a town, in the Atacama Desert of Chile is visible from space, and it is growing, per Space.com.

In 2023, a satellite image of the mountain of clothes in northern Chile was captured by SkyFi, an application that makes Earth observation data accessible to all. The 20-inch resolution image was shared with the public via the SkyFi blog on May 10. "With our web and mobile apps, anyone can access satellite imagery to confirm stories and see the world from a new perspective," the organization wrote. The picture showed real-time glimpses of the Atacama desert plagued by the growing pile of clothes that derived comparison with a nearby town to put things into perspective. 

The pile is credited to the overproduction of the fast fashion industry at a higher rate than human consumption. The report revealed the pile also comprised unusual clothing items like ski boots and discarded Christmas sweaters– not so festive. SkyFi confirmed that the massive garment dump in the middle of the Atacama desert indicates the environmental damage the fashion industry is causing to the planet. "The size of the pile and the pollution it's causing are visible from space, making it clear that there is a need for change in the fashion industry,” SkyFi wrote.

According to Uniform Market statistics, the fashion industry produces over 100 billion clothes annually, equivalent to 12.5 clothing items for every person in the world. And yet, there is a vast community of underprivileged people and children who are deprived of quality clothes. The report further states that the production of garments has doubled since the year 2000. The projections for global apparel consumption are only expected to increase in the future. Management of the massive pile of clothes becomes challenging with the 39,000 tons of garments added each year

Agence-France-Presse reported that 59,000 tons of clothes are dumped into the region every year, as per their 2021 estimates. The clothes are primarily manufactured in China and Bangladesh and exported for sale to the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Much like plastic wastes end up in landfills, the clothes that do not sell are sent to the Atacama through the nearby port of Iquique, in the Alto Hospicio free zone in Chile. In perspective, it takes an average human almost a day or two to clean up the pile of clothes from their rooms. 

Therefore, it’s not difficult to imagine the amount of effort and resources that would go behind the clean-up of the ever-increasing garment pile of the Atacama desert. Some measures have restricted the influx of discarded garments as few clothing merchants from Santiago, the capital of Chile, purchase some of the clothes. However, it becomes a tedious process as the city is located 1,100 miles to the south of the garment pile. Clothing smugglers buy clothes for reselling them in smaller markets in Latin America. Despite all of this, tons of garments remain discarded on the face of the earth, with no resolution or initiative in sight.