Nike for free! Tackling the piles of textile waste dumped in the Atacama

Every week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for discarded clothing in the sand.

- Sarah Johnson

Every week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for discarded clothing in the sand. About half of the hundreds of garments he finds are in perfect condition. He collects what he can and adds them to the two-tonne pile of clothes he has stored at a friend's house.

On 17 March, 300 of those items, including Nike and Adidas shorts, Calvin Klein jeans and a leather skirt, were listed for sale online. The price? Zero. Buyers had only to pay shipping costs. The first batch sold out in five hours, to customers from countries including Brazil, China, France, the US and UK.

Re-commerce Atacama is part of a campaign to raise awareness of the mountains of discarded clothes in Chile and of textile waste globally. It was set up after a fashion show in the desert last year where models walked a catwalk of sand wearing outfits made out of the surrounding waste.

"We want people to feel involved and be agents of change - not from a passive position of seeing content, but by purchasing something, showing people and telling our story of what is happening here in the desert," said Barria, 32, a civil engineer and co-founder of Desierto Vestido (Dressed Desert), an organisation dedicated to raising awareness of textile waste.