[Photo of an untidy and messy white wooden closet, photo credit to Pexel]

Chile disclosed the build-up of unsold clothes in the Atacama Desert through the BBC news in July of 2022, revealing the harsh reality of the consequences of the fast fashion industry.

Due to the recent trend of “fast fashion”, up to 100 billion clothes are produced by the fashion industry worldwide annually. 

However, out of the produced clothes, 92 million tons of unsold clothes are discarded. 

An average of 39,000 tonnes of unsold clothes are dumped solely in the Atacama Desert of Chile each year. 

“Fast fashion” is a term that abruptly appeared in the media in the early 2000s and was registered in the Oxford dictionary with the following definition: “inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.”

In short, fast fashion refers to the trend of buying mass quantities of inexpensive clothes that are only worn for a short time.

Fast fashion emerged in the recent decades from 2000 to 2014, consumers began buying 60% more clothes while wearing them for only half of the previous duration. 

Fast fashion industries include many well-known fashion brands such as Zara, H&M, GAP, Uniqlo, Forever 21, and Urban Outfitters. 

This problem is exacerbated as these fashion brands provide affordable yet “trendy” clothes, and hence, is known to be a perfect shopping brand for Gen Z, those who are born between 1997 to 2013.

A study done on Gen Z by ThredUP found that 71% of college students are planning to buy a new set of clothes for the new school year. 

As a consequence, a majority of the clothes ended up in landfill while the quality of clothes constantly declined to be produced at cheaper prices. 

On average 37 kilograms of clothes are thrown away by a US consumer every year, which adds up to 11.3 million tons of textile waste in the US alone. 

Fast fashion is not only responsible for landfill but also water waste; 20% of global water pollution is caused by the fashion industry.

A director of Con100cia — a sustainability consulting company — and a native of northern Chile, Franklin Zepeda, mentioned “I was shocked to think that we were becoming the textile dump for developed countries.”

He added that, “the problem is that the clothing is not biodegradable and has chemical products, so it is not accepted in the municipal landfills.”

The unsold clothes in the Atacama Desert can take up to 200 years to biodegrade while releasing chemicals into the atmosphere and the waterways. 

As a solution, he launched a startup company in 2018 called “EcoFibra” to produce insulation panels with recycled clothes. 

EcoFibra continues to create thermal and acoustic building insulations in Chile. 

To solve the issue of fast fashion as an individual, one can buy second-hand clothes from thrift shops. 

This is a practical solution as more than 142,700 people are employed in thrift stores in the US as of 2023 with around 20% of US citizens shopping at thrift shops every year. 

One can also simply invest in timeless pieces of clothes to prevent wasting money and clothes every year.