Atacama Clothing Dump
A few weeks ago I spotted this picture on the r/pics subreddit:
u/BigForte mentioned that he may have found the site on Google Maps — I decided not to look at the link and see if I could geolocate it myself, and see if any more information could be discovered.
First thing I did was enter “Atacama Desert” into Google Maps and have a quick look around. Now I don’t know much about Chile, and I’m not sure what I was expecting….A vast emptiness with a pile of old clothes that could be seen from space I guess — No such luck. Turns out the Atacama desert is vast (41,000 square miles), mountainous and has way more mines/facilities/structures than I expected.
Next, with the hills in the pictures’ background I thought i’d try Peakvisor, an app that will analyse and identify mountains in imported pictures, or using the camera on your phone when you point it at mountains. Unfortunately I didn’t get a result, that said, it was only the second timeI had used it.
So it was back to the original post; u/_Beee had pasted this paragraph:
“ Chile has long been a hub of second-hand and unsold clothing, made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where it is resold around Latin America. … Clothing merchants from the capital Santiago, 1,800km (1,100 miles) to the south, buy some, while much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But at least 39,000 tonnes that cannot be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the desert. “
I went to Google Earth and drew a 1800km from Santiago northwards. This got me closer, but didn’t really help. Googling “Atacama clothing pile” returned a number of results with news articles covering the subject. These provided additional pictures and a location of Iquique in the Alto Hospicio free zone.
With this information, it didn’t take me long to identify an area that I thought could be the clothing pile on Google Maps: Location 1.
I went back to the original Reddit post to check my findings against what others had found. I was surprised to see that no one had identified the same location that I had. Here are the locations that other Redditors had suggested:
Aside from Location 4, which looks like roadside fly tipping, it’s possible all of these are clothing dumps (the quote posted by u/_Beee says ‘dumps’ plural), or possibly none of them.
Later on in the original Reddit post it is mentioned that Salt Petre is mined in the area, and it may be that sites identified as “the pile” might be mining sites.
Unfortunately, we can’t use street mode or zoom in closer with good enough resolution to clearly identify the mass as clothing. I tried with Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yandex Maps and Sentinel One playground, but couldn’t get enough detail.
However, I still believe Location 1 is the one featured in the photos for the following reasons.
- Location 1 is situated close to the city and port, so is good for logistical reasons.
- The article from Al Jazeera and The Daily Mail shows haul routes through the pile, where trucks would drive through and dump the clothing. Both Location 1 & 2 have these, Location 3 does not.
- Both the Al Jazeera and Daily Mail articles show the clothes being shredded and recycled into insulation for wall panels. This is all going on in a long apex roofed building. A building of this description can be seen close to Location 1. It makes sense to have the facility close to the “source material”. Rather than driving out, collecting the material and transporting it to a manufacturing facility.
Whilst I’m reasonably content that Location 1 is the site in the original photo, I can’t be 100% certain. I think I’ll return to this at some point and use it as a bit of a training exercise for Peakvisor.
I’ve created a GIF that shows the change in Location 1and what i believe to be the increase in clothing dumped running from 31/10/2021 back to 31/12/2014. This was created using the time scale on Google Earth and Giphy.
This isn’t meant to be any kind of comment on “Fast Fashion”. There is a place for cheap clothing, and we all want to wear what is fashionable. Consideration is needed on how it is disposed of, and waste clothing has become an international industry in itself.
I’m happy to see that the clothing is being recycled into a really useful product.
If you have any questions or comments on what I have done, please let me know!
