Inspired by her trip last year to Bureo’s NetPlus recycling facility, Ambassador Katie McConnell shines a light on the innovative communities of Iquique in Chile – who are turning waste dumped in the Atacama desert into everything from tools, to art, to surfriding craft.
Katie McConnell: Imagine A Clean Planet
15.06.25
7 min read
Written by Katie McConnell
Sometimes the weight and complexity of the challenges facing us all can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, while having a chat with Nik Strong-Cvetich of Save the Waves Coalition, he reminded me that “challenge is just another word for opportunity.”
Perhaps one of the greatest challenges of our time – and therefore one of the greatest opportunities – is creating more fairness and abundance by cleaning up our planet and healing our wasteful tendencies.
To truly understand the scale of our predicament, it helps to look deep into the darkness of its beating heart. And to foster circularity, what better place to explore than one of the largest dumps in the world—a vast expanse in the Atacama Desert outside Iquique, Chile.
The heart of Iquique's urban reef system beats in time with El Bajo, a sonorous big wave on the tip of the southern Peninsula. On the north end, the large free-trade zone port receives container upon container of refuse - the results of global insatiability.
Set against a sci-fi moonscape of golden mountains stretching toward the altiplano, Iquique is a slabby surfer’s dream city, home to one of the most prolific bodysurfing, bodyboarding, and surfing scenes along the Humboldt Current. It’s also one of my favorite places in the world, one I’ve returned to nearly every year for over a decade.
Iquique thrives on a tax-free import/export economy, fueled by a large port. This port has shaped the city’s history, from 19th-century guano and saltpeter exports to today’s copper shipments. But in recent years, Iquique has also become an importer of the Global North’s fast fashion and secondhand waste. Bundles of clothes and household items arrive from the U.S. and Canada, sorted into fardos (bales) that cycle through layers of resale and redistribution. What doesn’t sell gets trucked into the high desert and dumped; miles upon miles of decaying waste, stretching to the horizon.
If humans were trying to recommit our waste to natural cycles, we made a particularly ironic choice with the Atacama. Its dry, salty climate makes the Atacama one of the most preservative places on the planet. Not far from the dump, for example, ancient Chinchorro mummies remain intact, predating even Egyptian mummies by 2000 years. The waste here isn’t decomposing anytime soon.
When the piles become too big, people set fire to them, releasing toxic smoke that plagues the nearby town of Alto Hospicio. Even among the ashes we find an abundance of useful materials. With a little effort in sorting it out, scarcity could be turned into the myth it truly is.
In August of last year, inspired by Finisterre’s commitment to recycled fabrics, I returned to Iquique to see if the dump could teach us how to clean up our world.
I met up with two longtime surf friends: entrepreneur Miguel Hernandez, owner of Uma Jaqi Escuela de Suf, and artist/shaper Ignacio Hernandez Checura, creator of Achike Fresh Bodysurf Handplanes. Despite our different backgrounds, the ocean has bonded us for over a decade. Between surf sessions, I ventured with each of them into the dump, discussing the system and how to fix it. I asked them, “Can you imagine a clean Iquique?” Their answers gave me hope.
Achike tells me about his motivation for conducting youth bodysurfing programs: “When we get in the water more often, our lives gradually begin to align themselves to take better care of ourselves, each other, and the planet.”
Miguel named his surf school Uma Jaqi “Ocean Human” in indigenous Aymara because of his belief that the ocean is for everyone, and through watersports we become better people.
Miguel sees the waste as an economic opportunity. “All the trash—all of it—is mine!” he proclaims, envisioning a system where collecting, sorting, recycling, and reselling materials is a thriving business. One afternoon, he and I drove into the desert, gathered discarded metals, and explored reselling them. The market exists; it just needs organization and scaling.
Crushed cans and housewares (showerheads, pots and pans, cables, and other miscellania) were presented to local metal recyclers for examination. With a keen eye, the buyers discover precious metals hidden even within composite items, extracting them, weighing them, and passing us a cash payout. They then sort and resell amassed quantities to larger buyers, putting the materials back into circulation and boosting the economic system at multiple scales.
Miguel knows an opportunity when he sees one, and together we made 39 "lukas" (approximately USD $40)...
...all for half a day's work between two people – aproximately 1.5 times above Chile's minimum wage.
Achike, on the other hand, envisions a community-driven transformation. He wants people to repurpose waste into a vibrant, art-focused, clean city.
He took me to La Quebradilla, one of the main ferias (street markets) where secondhand goods find new life. Here, he sources materials to shape his handplanes for bodysurfing, proving that discarded items can become tools of joy and performance.
In Iquique, broken surfboards can seem to outnumber intact ones...
... add this to the infinite supply of stuff being shipped in, and Achike has an abundance of material for his art and wavecraft."
Their visions aren’t mutually exclusive. The path to a clean Iquique, and a clean Earth, will likely require both economic and cultural shifts. What’s clear is that solutions exist. They just need momentum.
Thankfully, Chile is investing in recycling startups and spearheading legislation that will require manufacturers to include a minimum percentage of recycled material into every product – a huge step towards sustainability, environmental stewardship, and corporate accountability.
After my time in the north, I traveled south to meet with Bureo, one of Finisterre’s newest partners. Founded by surfers, Bureo purchases discarded fishing nets and converts them into usable materials, ensuring that these plastic-based nets don’t damage reefs, entangle marine life, or pollute coastal areas.
Their recycled NetPlus® fabric, now used in Finisterre’s signature Nimbus Jackets, is a step toward reducing our demand for virgin materials and simultaneously working towards solving our pollution crisis. Seeing the abundance of waste in the Atacama, a monumental opportunity exists to expand and diversify these efforts.
Surfer-founded Bureo purchases fishing nets via a complex network – buying nets, and hiring employees at an incentivizing rate. Years ago, they first contacted my friend Miguel at his surf school to organize the collection and transport of a large batch of nets via a cold call from a web search using the word “surf".
The tremendous Port San Vicente in southern Chile is home to one of the world’s most productive fisheries, a lively and ongoing case study in resource management, conservation enforcement, stakeholder coordination and cooperation… and an endless supply of fishing nets.
The future we want is within reach. With small actions, shared efforts, and the courage to believe in change, we can shape a cleaner, more circular and harmonious world. The solutions are already taking root – now it’s time to help them grow.
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