One of the ways to fight the dumping of fast fashion that hasn’t sold is to offer brand name pieces salvaged from the desert for free  via a website to anyone who is willing to pay the shipping costs.

The Guardian reports that on March 17, the first batch of 300 items of brand name fashion put up for sale on Re-commerce Atacama, ‘sold out’ in five hours, bought by customers from Brazil, China, France, the US and the UK.

Civil engineer Bastián Barria goes out each week into the Atacama desert looking for discarded clothing in the sand – many of them being in perfect condition. He has amassed a two-tonne pile at a friend’s house, from what is called the Fast Fashion Graveyard.

Every year, roughly, 40,000 to 60,000 tons of clothing are brought into the tax-free port of Iquique,unloaded from ships and dumped illegally near Alto Hospicio in the Atacama Desert.  Chile is the third largest importer of used clothing in the world.

The pile of abandoned clothing in the Chilean desert has been growing for years, and once sparked a huge fire. But the problem hasn’t gone away despite various attempts to stop dumping.

Re-commerce Atacama is part of a brilliant new approach to an old problem that is created by trendy fashion that is quickly produced in response to social media and as quickly abandoned when it doesn’t sell as quickly. 

Barria, a 32 year old civil engineer, cofounded Desertio Vestido (Dressed Desert), with law student Ángela Astudillo. They have reached into the fashion industry itself for strategies to draw attention to the problem of textile waste and help push the  industry towards sustainability.

“We want people to feel involved and be agents of change – not from a passive position of seeing content, but by purchasing something, showing people and telling our story of what is happening here in the desert,” says Barria.

In April 2024, Desierto Vestido organized a unique fashion show dubbed Atacama Fashion Week. It was s a collaborative effort with Fashion Revolution Brazil, a fashion activism movement, and Artplan, a Brazilian advertising agency. Brazilian stylist and visual artist Maya Ramos designed the collection, themed around  earth, fire, air, and water using discarded garments collected from the landfill.

“Each of the looks in the fashion show represented the different types of pollution and their environmental impacts,” said Vita Magazine. “The catwalk? The desert landfill itself. This creative and unorthodox fashion show illustrated the enormity of the clothing waste crisis. With the majority of our clothing being made of plastic-based fabrics that take more than 200 years to break down, and micro-trends pushing consumption at record levels, this fashion show reminds us that we need to do better.”

Cover image: Atacama Fashion Week

Sources:

Calvin Klein jeans for free! Branded clothes dumped in the desert snapped up on anti-fast fashion website. Guardian, Mar. 28, 2025

Castoffs to catwalk: fashion show shines light on vast Chile clothes dump visible from space. Guardian, May 8 2024

Chile’s Atacama Desert: Where Fast Fashion Goes to Die, EcoWatch, Nov. 15, 2021

Burn After Wearing. Grist, Jan. 4, 2024Lessons learned from the Atacama Fashion Show. Vita Magazine, Jun. 18, 2024