Items taken from a mountain of discarded garments in the Atacama desert were sold for the price of shipping in a fightback against the ‘racist and colonialist’ dumping of unwanted clothing

Every week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for items of 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 for the first time. The price? Zero. Customers had only to pay shipping costs. The first batch sold out in five hours, bought by customers from countries including Brazil, China, France, the US and the UK.