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Julia Shipley and Muriel Alarcón
This story originally appeared on Grist and was copublished with El País. It’s reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A Spanish-language version can be read here. Reporting was supported by the Joan Konner Program in the Journalism of Ideas.
On the morning of June 12, 2022, Ángela Astudillo, then a law student in her mid-twenties, grabbed her water bottle and hopped into her red Nissan Juke. The cofounder of Dress Desert, or Desierto Vestido, a textile recycling advocacy nonprofit, and the daughter of tree farmers, Astudillo lives in a gated apartment complex in Alto Hospicio, a dusty city at the edge of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, with her husband, daughter, bunny, and three aquatic turtles.
Exiting the compound, Astudillo pinched the wheel, pulled over next to a car on the side of the road, and greeted Bárbara Pino, a fashion professor, and three of her students, who were waiting inside.
They made their way to a mountain of sand known as El Paso de los Angeles Mulos Angels. Less than a mile from his home, squinting in the distance, Astudillo saw a trickle of smoke rising in his direction. With her in the lead, the two cars headed for the dune, where the world’s second-largest pile of clothing was located.
As they got closer to El Paso de la Mula, the thin trail of smoke had expanded into a huge black cloud. Astudillo stopped the car and texted the academics behind her.
It looks like it’s on fire. Let’s hope it’s not there. 🙁 🙁 🙁
She then dialed them directly and asked, “Do you still want to go?”
A Chilean flag rises above a traffic cone among piles of burnt garments in the Atacama Desert.
Angela Astudillo holds a deserted garment from the Atacama Desert.
An aerial view of used clothes discarded in the Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile, on September 26, 2021.
A salesman in Iquique sells second-hand shoes.
Manuela Medina, left, and her family pose for a photo near their pile of clothes in the Atacama Desert.
Paulin Silva poses for a photo in an office. She pushed the government to take action against illegal clothing dumps near Iquique, Chile.
Shoes pile up in an illegal clothing dump in the Atacama Desert.
Graffiti in one of Chile’s most damaging slums, near Manuela Medina’s home. The word “votar” means “to throw away,” which means “to throw” in Spanish. But in its current form, it says, “Don’t Vote for Anything. This will be informed.
Bárbara Pino, director of the Fashion System Observatory, is held on the campus of the Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile.
Jazmín Yañez poses next to a pile of second-hand clothes that she will sell at her home store, Stop Recicla.
A garment emerges from the sand of the Atacama Desert.
Men paint at a factory that recycles discarded used textiles in the Atacama Desert to make insulating panels for the walls of social housing, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile, in 2021.
Bastián Barria, co-founder of the organization Dress Desert with Ángela Astudillo, recently joined a government-sponsored committee to advance circular economy projects in Chile.
In the surroundings of Alto Hospicio, in the Atacama Desert, new landfills emerge every day. What arrives is burned by individuals living there. Some of them receive payment for doing it.
A fireplace sweeps through the sale of clothes in Manuela Medina, in the Atacama Desert, on June 12, 2022.
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