The fashion industry and North-South dynamics: what the case study on waste clothing in Atacama (Chile) shows

Abstract

This article is the result of a graduation research that proposes to analyze the environmental impacts, specifically the waste generation caused by the Fashion Industry from the 2000s onwards. The Fashion Industry is the third sector that emits the most carbon dioxide, besides being responsible for much of the waste generation - only in Brazil are 175.000 tons/year. Thus, together with the high degree of internationalization of production and trade linked to fashion, the importance of this problem will be made explicit in the ambit of Global Environmental Policy and to the area of International Relations, which witnesses the growing protagonism of environmental issues. As much as this agenda is of global interest, the current study understands that the impacts do not affect the actors of the international system in an egalitarian way due to the structure of capitalism with the division between center-periphery. Therefore, with the purpose of assessing how the consequences of the fashion industry affect States according to their position on the international stage, the research focuses in the analysis of the "fast fashion graveyard", the accumulation of new and semi-new clothes located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The main objective is to verify how the countries of the Global South share similar consequences with regard to environmental impacts, specifically those produced by the Fashion Industry, from the Chilean case. Finally, the relevance of the research in the context of International Relations is highlighted, due to the lack of similar approaches, also considering the importance of studying socio-environmental problems from a critical perspective.