More than 65,000 tons of used clothes, shipped from Asia, Europe, and the U.S., arrive annually in Iquique, the place they’re meant to be resold round Latin America. The port is what’s referred to as the Inquique “free zone,” one in all several areas in Chile meant to encourage worldwide commerce, the place there are no tariffs, taxes, or different customs-related charges.

As a consequence, annually about 35,000 tons of clothes, which may’t be resold, keep within the “free zone,” since nobody needs to pay the tariffs required to maneuver them again out of the world. Landfills refuse to take the artificial fibers that make up the majority of the clothes, EcoFibra founder Franklin Zepeda told AFP, so the desert has grow to be the dumping floor.