This new report presented by the Alianza Basura Cero Chile aims to identify and monitor transboundary movements of plastic waste.
In 2022 Chile made headlines when news showed shocking images of the illegal dumps where thousands of tons of textile waste were disposed of and burned in the middle of the Atacama Desert, just metres away from the homes of families living there. This practice is very common, especially in Alto Hospicio, the place where this waste goes, closing a life cycle that begins in some developed nation of the world that manufactures low-cost clothing in some underdeveloped nation of the world, and then moves on to another perverse mechanism of false valorisation of textile waste under a promise of "economic development" that again ends up sacrificing and environmentally undermining impoverished or developing areas of the countries of the global south, a model of operation recognised, for the purposes of this one as #WasteColonialism
Most of the clothes are directly and inevitably destined to be buried in landfills, dumped or burned in open fires in the receiving countries, as soon as they leave any port in the world. It is worth asking, then, what is the profit model that the importation of discarded second-hand clothing to Chile can justify, since the reality shown in the most shameful images of our country, from the Atacama desert to Tarapacá, Alto Hospicio, has Chile as one of the countries with the worst management of this waste in the world.
