#573: The Atacama's fashion graveyard

Where do your old clothes to to? You might be surprised.

A BBC Assignment programme explores a clothing graveyard which started to develop outside the town of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile, in the Atacama Desert.

Available on BBC Sounds.

Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on earth – often likened to Mars. It’s also home to piles of dumped clothes from fast fashion labels across the world. Because it’s so dry nothing decomposes. And that means that clothes ditched 10 to 20 years ago still look recognisable. Sometimes the mountains of clothes are burnt causing toxic fumes which harm the local community of Alto Hospicio.

This environmental crisis has been going on for years. It’s a complex situation with multiple players involved. But different groups are starting to take action.

For Assignment, Jane Chambers travels to the Atacama Desert to meet activists and locals trying to raise awareness. An enormous giant – El Gigante Vestido – is being created in the desert out of used clothes to get people talking.

We’ll hear if Chile’s authorities, businesses, activists and members of the local community are doing enough to make a significant difference to the clothes crisis.

Producer: Jane Chambers
Sound engineer: Neil Churchill
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Editor: Penny Murphy

(Photo: El Gigante Vestido, a huge replica of the Gigante de Tarapacá built out of used t-shirts by architects Andrés Echeverría and Victoria García to raise awareness of the clothes being dumped in the Atacama Desert. Credit: Andrés Díaz)

This connects with the organisation that was set up by local residents to recycle some of the clothing, much of which has now been burnt.

I show this France 24 piece...

#545: Natural History Reading List #24: 'Shifting Sands'

The subtitle of the book is 'A Human History of the Sahara' and the author has personal experience of living in the region, whose name comes from some local terms.

It's one of the best books I read last year.

The indigenous populations would never use the term 'Sahara', as they refer to smaller sub-regions with which they are familiar. They will generally have quite specialist knowledge of particular areas and the routes between trading posts.

They used words that described the empty, dangerous, inhospitable nature of the region, some of which were then appropriated for the actual place names for desert areas

There is also plenty of insight. Jay Owens' book 'Dust' has previously explored the many geographical aspects that can be obtained from exploring the desert sands.

A large part of the desert is made of hamada or desert pavement, or stony ground, and sand dunes are relatively rare.

The Natural History of deserts will not be a main area of the GCSE Natural History, which will focus particularly on UK based ecosystems and nature, but the way that nature can survive and people can thrive in such challenging environments is worth exploring. 

The other aspect of the book is that the desert hasn't always been a desert - it used to be woodland, but climate change resulted in a change in the landscape of the whole region.

This book has been really fascinating and increased my knowledge of deserts a great deal. It is the additional human context which has made all the difference, and the way that it is put together is authentic and authoritative.

There is plenty on the desert as it is today, and its challenges.

My copy was published by Profile Books in 2025.

Hardback,  374pp

ISBN: 987-1-788166454

An audiobook preview is here. Those with Spotify Premium can listen to the book too.

This area is one where once again indigenous knowledge is coming to the fore.