Final 12 months you could have seen headlines about a rare picture captured by satellite tv for pc — a mountain of garments within the Chilean desert. For those who didn’t stick with the story, you could not have realized that this heap owes its origins to secondhand garments — the stuff we abandon, generally after only some outings.
We could throw our discards into the trash bin. Or possibly we load them into plastic luggage destined for thrift outlets or resale boutiques. Maybe we stuff them in clothes donation bins and containers.
If these gadgets aren’t offered or don’t make the lower for donations right here, they could very nicely make their approach to different nations, the place there’s a brisk enterprise in our used sweatshirts, attire and pants. However the quantity flowing into nations equivalent to Chile and Ghana is crushing and can’t be dealt with by authorities, resulting in environmental disasters — ghastly testimony confirming America’s nonstop want for brand new outfits.
The rise of quick vogue has solely exacerbated the movement of our discards, a lot of which have been handled with chemical substances or include plastic-based fibers, additional contributing to the microplastics that may make their approach into our our bodies.
American and European legislators are beginning to concentrate to issues about exploited employees and greenhouse gases related to quick vogue, proposing legal guidelines that, they hope, would restrict environmental impacts. Nevertheless it’s unclear if any type of laws can cease a $13 pair of denims — wrapped in plastic and cardboard and touring by container ship and truck — from being delivered to our entrance doorways.
Within the meantime, our leftovers proceed to clog waterways, char the skies with poisonous smoke and break locations the place different individuals stay. And one other 39,000 tons (or so) are anticipated on the dump in Chile’s Atacama Desert this 12 months.
