Fixing Chile’s fashion graveyard
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on earth – often likened to Mars. It is also home to piles of dumped clothes from fast fashion labels across the world. Because it is so dry nothing decomposes. And that means that clothes ditched 10 to 20 years ago still look recognisable. Sometimes the mountains of clothes are burnt causing toxic fumes which harm the local community of Alto Hospicio. This environmental crisis has been going on for years. It is a complex situation with multiple players involved. But different groups are starting to take action. Jane Chambers travels to the Atacama Desert to meet activists and locals trying to raise awareness. An enormous giant – El Gigante Vestido – is being created in the desert out of used clothes to get people talking. This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.5 | Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC. |
| 0:13.0 | Ake is a busy seaside city in northern Chile, where locals and tourists splashing the waves and enjoy the beaches. |
| 0:22.6 | It's also a port and a free trade zone. |
| 0:25.6 | Businesses can import and store goods without paying custom duties or VAT |
| 0:30.6 | and one import stands out. |
| 0:33.6 | Chile's the largest buyer of used clothes in Latin America, importing more than 120,000 tons per year. |
| 0:42.4 | Around 40% of those garments enter the country here in Akiki, |
| 0:46.8 | and where many of them end up isn't what you'd expect. |
| 0:51.9 | This place is called Santa Rosa. It's where people came to dump bells of used clothes. For a time, it was just jeans, so we called it the jeans spot. This is one of a number of places in Altospizio, which are used as rubbish dumps for clothes. |
| 1:18.3 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:21.4 | I'm Jane Chambers, and in this edition of assignment, |
| 1:25.1 | I'm in Chile to find out about the country's fashion graveyard and to meet some of the people trying to fix it. |
| 1:30.8 | Jean-Cala Zambrana Aveles, |
| 1:33.3 | or Carla, as many people call her, |
| 1:35.4 | is taking me on a tour of Aptuospicio as she lives. |
| 1:39.6 | It's around a 30-minute car ride from Makiki up a steep hill. |
| 1:44.0 | The town's surrounded by sandy hills. |
| 1:46.5 | It's hot, windy and arid. |
| 1:49.4 | What I really notice in some of the places we visit is the smell. |
| 1:53.9 | It's an acrid stench of burnt plastic, |
| 1:56.3 | which tickles your nose, sticks in your throat and makes your eyes burn. |
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