According to this article: “Chile's Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world, has been a dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers. A mountain of discarded clothing, including Christmas sweaters and ski boots, cuts a strange sight in the desert, which is increasingly suffering from pollution created by the fashion industry.”
This is very interesting. It would be interesting to find out the mechanics of the supply chain that made this mound. Yes this gives capitalism a bad strike. Surely there is an alternative like making this stuff into something else. I do know what, but seems to me there is some sort of recycle such as building materials.
Nooooooo kidding! Wow what a dress up party that would make!! ~~~Just watched a Twitter mom standing in a children’s section in Target showing labels and marketing cutenesses on toddler clothing. Recommending a Resistance! Maybe after all this that is where these products will end up, in the middle of South America. ~~~~no, I have not darkened the door of a Target since the beginnings of the gender bathrooms issue. So I do what I can. If my gas station starts offering sippy cups with gender quips along with the 16 oz? sodas….anyway I don’t drink those…then I might have to find another station.~~~Keep in mind, in years past there used to be community uproar for display of Playboy mags in view of young children at the checkout desk. ~~~But, hey, one can see that stuff everywhere now, and anyway, few folks know the definition of “a lady” let alone “a woman”. LOL LOL. So sad BTW, Big pet peeve, not only how do you use an apostrophe, hurts my head, but why use “gentleman” for gender in your speaking and writing. “Gentleman “ I think should be retired and only used when there is real evidence of such. Otherwise, a simple “man” or “male” will suffice. Drives me nuts! “The gentleman…….who raped her” ??!! Get a grip Newsroom!!
are they still dumping clothes in the desert? good grief this is a sin if ever there was one. It is bad enough that some neighbors throw their trash in the ditch and then the wind blows in in your yard. But this is a natural preserve! I don't understand why the govt does not interfere and forbids this. But lots of docs online, show how African countries, where they try to develop tourism, have dumps everywhere. Just saw one some time ago, I think Botswana. This is everyone-s fault. If no one throws trash around this world would be clean. No animal is as dirty as a human! Next come pigs, but they do not throw plastic wrappers out!
Your points are well made and well-taken. Humans have always struggled with negative externalities and, generally, they've failed, sometimes catastrophically. Capitalism is tremendously powerful and takes that weakness to horrific levels, e.g. soil depletion or toxic dumping.
My wife and I generate one bag of trash per month which includes so called "recyclable" waste. And yet I have no idea how, where or when the recycling actually takes place.
I met an entrepreneur at a cat show in Ancaster, Ontario selling really neat litter boxes. He said he tried using recycled plastic in their manufacturing process but because of contamination, left pits and other unsightly defects in the finished product. He now uses strictly virgin plastic in their construction.
I once spoke with a civil engineer on a job site and ask why construction debris was not recycled like residential trash. He said that's because the majority of residential recyclables end up in the same stream as the regular garbage from his experience working in the Toronto area. What a waste of time and money creating double and triple stream garbage trucks. All to be shipped over the border to Michigan in endless lines of eighteen wheelers to be dumped. NIMBY
There are only two recyclable household wastes: metals and cardboard. Collecting anything else at the curb is a waste of the resources used to collect and process. Because in addition, the food scraps we're being encourage to separate for collection to supposedly create methane gas for power generation inevitably fail due to cost overruns and/or the noxious odors IT creates in nearby neighborhoods.
Then there is the issue of that other household stream nobody wants to talk about. The kind that exits your household through the sewer, commonly known as sewage sludge. In the before time this waste was usually dealt with by incineration but hey, THAT generates too much carbon! Now IT is processed and sold to the public as garden fertilizer, including all the drugs, paint and chemical people flush down their drains.
HAS capitalism created all these things? I dunno, what about depleted uranium? You can't see IT from space but IT is a dangerous waste in middle eastern deserts. What about shuttered steel plants that the original owners just walked away from? You might see those from space if you know where to look. The old Studebaker plant, closed for near seventy years still exists in Hamilton.
The reason these waste dumps exist is because Mr. Money Bags ain't profiting no more. Kinda like the Pidgeon Pizza Party. The original owner of the pizza was full. Screw IT! Someone else will clean up the litter and maybe the roadkill IT may generate as well. If you have ever witnessed with your own eyes a family of racoons dead in the street because some simple minded fool threw a half eaten burger out the car window, you may find that rage you thought you never had.
I'm finished ranting, thanks for sharing Mickey Z.
Perhaps they could send some of those to clothe the denuded mountains in British Columbia, clear-cut of forests because paper money held in underground vaults grows much faster than the trees its made of?
I think it is important to remember, this pile of clothing is not the result of capitalism, it is the result of unthinking, individual people who made a choice to simply dump into the desert. Capitalism didn't do this. People did. Normal, everyday, people. Capitalists/capitalism didn't make these individuals deciding in this industry dump into the desert. They did that all on their own. When a pile was made, others CHOSE to INDIVIDUALLY follow suit. Has nothing to do with availability of goods, it has to do with choices made by those who were tasked with being rid of the excess. These could have been sent to an impoverished area where they would be used, but greed and a lack of human compassion kept that from taking place. People did this. No matter the system of things. People could have chosen to act differently, in ANY system of things.
So well said, Mickey - Yes ! - We need to critique capitalism but that doesn't mean we are attracted to socialism. The whole system of the military-industrial-meat-medical-pharmaceutical-media-banking -government-tech complex is rotten and corrupt and deluded to the core and wounds us all not just physically and culturally, but psychologically & spiritually & intellectually as well. Time for creativity, intuition, and discriminating awareness!
This is very interesting. It would be interesting to find out the mechanics of the supply chain that made this mound. Yes this gives capitalism a bad strike. Surely there is an alternative like making this stuff into something else. I do know what, but seems to me there is some sort of recycle such as building materials.
Nooooooo kidding! Wow what a dress up party that would make!! ~~~Just watched a Twitter mom standing in a children’s section in Target showing labels and marketing cutenesses on toddler clothing. Recommending a Resistance! Maybe after all this that is where these products will end up, in the middle of South America. ~~~~no, I have not darkened the door of a Target since the beginnings of the gender bathrooms issue. So I do what I can. If my gas station starts offering sippy cups with gender quips along with the 16 oz? sodas….anyway I don’t drink those…then I might have to find another station.~~~Keep in mind, in years past there used to be community uproar for display of Playboy mags in view of young children at the checkout desk. ~~~But, hey, one can see that stuff everywhere now, and anyway, few folks know the definition of “a lady” let alone “a woman”. LOL LOL. So sad BTW, Big pet peeve, not only how do you use an apostrophe, hurts my head, but why use “gentleman” for gender in your speaking and writing. “Gentleman “ I think should be retired and only used when there is real evidence of such. Otherwise, a simple “man” or “male” will suffice. Drives me nuts! “The gentleman…….who raped her” ??!! Get a grip Newsroom!!
are they still dumping clothes in the desert? good grief this is a sin if ever there was one. It is bad enough that some neighbors throw their trash in the ditch and then the wind blows in in your yard. But this is a natural preserve! I don't understand why the govt does not interfere and forbids this. But lots of docs online, show how African countries, where they try to develop tourism, have dumps everywhere. Just saw one some time ago, I think Botswana. This is everyone-s fault. If no one throws trash around this world would be clean. No animal is as dirty as a human! Next come pigs, but they do not throw plastic wrappers out!
Your points are well made and well-taken. Humans have always struggled with negative externalities and, generally, they've failed, sometimes catastrophically. Capitalism is tremendously powerful and takes that weakness to horrific levels, e.g. soil depletion or toxic dumping.
My wife and I generate one bag of trash per month which includes so called "recyclable" waste. And yet I have no idea how, where or when the recycling actually takes place.
I met an entrepreneur at a cat show in Ancaster, Ontario selling really neat litter boxes. He said he tried using recycled plastic in their manufacturing process but because of contamination, left pits and other unsightly defects in the finished product. He now uses strictly virgin plastic in their construction.
I once spoke with a civil engineer on a job site and ask why construction debris was not recycled like residential trash. He said that's because the majority of residential recyclables end up in the same stream as the regular garbage from his experience working in the Toronto area. What a waste of time and money creating double and triple stream garbage trucks. All to be shipped over the border to Michigan in endless lines of eighteen wheelers to be dumped. NIMBY
There are only two recyclable household wastes: metals and cardboard. Collecting anything else at the curb is a waste of the resources used to collect and process. Because in addition, the food scraps we're being encourage to separate for collection to supposedly create methane gas for power generation inevitably fail due to cost overruns and/or the noxious odors IT creates in nearby neighborhoods.
Then there is the issue of that other household stream nobody wants to talk about. The kind that exits your household through the sewer, commonly known as sewage sludge. In the before time this waste was usually dealt with by incineration but hey, THAT generates too much carbon! Now IT is processed and sold to the public as garden fertilizer, including all the drugs, paint and chemical people flush down their drains.
HAS capitalism created all these things? I dunno, what about depleted uranium? You can't see IT from space but IT is a dangerous waste in middle eastern deserts. What about shuttered steel plants that the original owners just walked away from? You might see those from space if you know where to look. The old Studebaker plant, closed for near seventy years still exists in Hamilton.
The reason these waste dumps exist is because Mr. Money Bags ain't profiting no more. Kinda like the Pidgeon Pizza Party. The original owner of the pizza was full. Screw IT! Someone else will clean up the litter and maybe the roadkill IT may generate as well. If you have ever witnessed with your own eyes a family of racoons dead in the street because some simple minded fool threw a half eaten burger out the car window, you may find that rage you thought you never had.
I'm finished ranting, thanks for sharing Mickey Z.
Perhaps they could send some of those to clothe the denuded mountains in British Columbia, clear-cut of forests because paper money held in underground vaults grows much faster than the trees its made of?
I think it is important to remember, this pile of clothing is not the result of capitalism, it is the result of unthinking, individual people who made a choice to simply dump into the desert. Capitalism didn't do this. People did. Normal, everyday, people. Capitalists/capitalism didn't make these individuals deciding in this industry dump into the desert. They did that all on their own. When a pile was made, others CHOSE to INDIVIDUALLY follow suit. Has nothing to do with availability of goods, it has to do with choices made by those who were tasked with being rid of the excess. These could have been sent to an impoverished area where they would be used, but greed and a lack of human compassion kept that from taking place. People did this. No matter the system of things. People could have chosen to act differently, in ANY system of things.
"either or" is the tool of the watchers...
So well said, Mickey - Yes ! - We need to critique capitalism but that doesn't mean we are attracted to socialism. The whole system of the military-industrial-meat-medical-pharmaceutical-media-banking -government-tech complex is rotten and corrupt and deluded to the core and wounds us all not just physically and culturally, but psychologically & spiritually & intellectually as well. Time for creativity, intuition, and discriminating awareness!