Date of Award

Spring 5-8-2026

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Environmental Studies

Advisor(s)

Dr. John Van Buren

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of textile waste dumping, specifically how secondhand clothing exports from the Global North create environmental, social, and public health burdens in the Global South. The study focuses on case studies in Chile’s Atacama Desert, where shipments of used clothing overwhelm local waste infrastructures and worsen patterns of environmental injustice. Chapter 1 describes the global flows of textile waste, including trade volumes, landfill accumulation, and the impacts of discarded clothing on ecosystem services such as clean water, fertile soils, and breathable air, alongside health risks from microplastic pollution, toxic runoff, and respiratory hazards from textile fires. This data provides a baseline understanding of how the fashion industry’s waste is displaced across borders and disproportionately placed onto vulnerable communities. Chapter 2 explores the environmental history of textile waste, tracing the journey of post-consumer clothing from charitable donations to a transnational waste stream. This historical view situates the current crisis within the broader direction of industrial fashion, globalization, and resource exploitation. Chapter 3 examines the environmental economics of the issue, analyzing the costs and benefits of the secondhand clothing trade, its effects on local economies in the Global South, and the market incentives that sustain overproduction and overconsumption in the Global North. Chapter 4 investigates the environmental politics and law shaping textile waste management, including international trade policies and the absence of extended producer responsibility regulations. Finally, Chapter 5 combines the findings into a set of policy recommendations. These include strengthening extended producer responsibility, regulating transnational textile trade, and supporting local waste management capacity in receiving countries to reduce the injustices in global fashion waste.

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