Christmas jumpers are fuelling a global eco disaster

Fast fashion is one of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change and our buying habits have resulted in huge textile dumps in the deserts of Chile

Women search for used clothes amid tons discarded in the Atacama desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. Picture: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

You may have seen images over the last few weeks of the Atacama Desert in Chile where unwanted clothes are dumped and left to rot very slowly in one of the driest places on earth.

These clothes, some 59,000 tonnes of them each year, arrive at Iquique port in the northern part of the country from Europe, the USA, and Asia.