The Atacama Desert in Chile is for the most part an unspoilt natural wonder:
The Atacama desert | The Atacama Desert is commonly known as… | Flickr
However, shocking images in the press show a different picture:
And as the Mail points out, this is largely because of our thirst for fast fashion:
The REAL price of your throwaway fast fashion | Daily Mail Online
In another well-researched piece today, the Mail travels to Scotland:
Welcome to ACS Clothing, the factory leading the way when it comes to helping retailers hoping to solve the problem of the UK’s returns mountain — the vast quantity of often fast-fashion that is bought online each year and then sent back to the retailer for a refund…
But with around 50 per cent of returns never making it back on sale and often having to be binned, there may also be an unintended cost to the planet. Last week — with shocking photos to illustrate the scale of the problem — it was revealed that garments from the UK were among the 39,000 tonnes of Western clothing that has been dumped in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
What you may not realise is that our growing returns culture is also contributing to the issue of clothes pollution because if returned items can’t go on to be resold, they too could end up on a similar shaming heap, in some other unfortunate corner of the world…
There are also serious implications for sustainability. For a start, millions of packages travelling the length and breadth of the country every day throws up obvious ecological issues from vehicle emissions…
Many brands are now aware that customers are beginning to care about the eco-credentials of where they shop. This is where the factory ACS Clothing comes in…
What really happens to your internet shopping returns | Daily Mail Online