See the true scale of the world’s used-clothing trade.

The Textile Waste Expeditionary Summit convenes apparel, footwear, and textile companies, the organizations that recover and manage textiles after use, circularity experts, and policymakers — at the intersection of one of the world’s largest secondhand-clothing hubs and the global question of where our clothing goes after use. Chile now generates an estimated 572,000 tonnes of textile waste a year — roughly 32 kilos per person (Ministry of the Environment).

Northern Chile — the Iquique Free Trade Zone (ZOFRI) and the surrounding Atacama — is a concentrated, highly visible example of the complex global secondhand-clothing trade. The widely shared images of desert dumps galvanized public concern, but they show only one slice of a much larger reuse and trade infrastructure that now sits directly in the path of Chile’s new textile EPR rules and emerging U.S. frameworks.

This is a learning experience built for the people shaping active U.S. policy — designed to make the operational, social, and environmental realities of global textile flows legible before Extended Producer Responsibility scales nationally.

Feria La Quebradilla, one of northern Chile’s best-known open-air used-clothing markets, on the edge of Alto Hospicio.

Where imported bales are graded into commodities for reuse, resale, repair, wiping cloth, and recycling.

Accessible textile-residual sites, visited with full protective gear — coveralls, masks, and steel-toed boots.

See how textiles imported under HS 6309 are processed in practice — from sorting through conversion into wiping cloths, recycling, and other applications.

Examine how Chile’s June 2025 decision to make textiles its seventh EPR priority product shifts responsibilities and costs — and what that signals for U.S. exporters and domestic EPR design.

Explore what happens when two EPR regimes — Chile’s and the emerging U.S. patchwork — begin to interact across a shared secondhand economy.

Build understanding and informed dialogue among the stakeholders who will shape U.S. textile policy and infrastructure over the coming decade.

Arrivals into Iquique. Opening dinner Monday evening — networking reception and expedition orientation.

Policy briefings and a textile-systems overview, framing the field days across the Iquique region.

Participants split into small groups and rotate through the textile market, sortation facilities, and accessible residual sites (visited with protective gear), with stakeholder dialogue alongside local NGOs and technical experts.

Implementation-focused workshops on textile EPR, recovery infrastructure, responsible end markets, and future U.S. policy considerations.

Departures and return travel to the United States.

State legislators, regulators, and agency staff working directly on U.S. textile EPR

Apparel, footwear, and textile brands and retailers covered by U.S. EPR laws

Resale, recommerce, collection, sorting, and recycling companies

NGOs and circularity-focused investors in EPR design and infrastructure

Technical experts in materials, trade, and waste systems who advise on policy

Circle has spent ten years convening unlikely stakeholders across highly polarized material and policy debates — packaging EPR, advanced recycling, circular infrastructure, and the global plastics treaty negotiations.

The approach is rooted in neutral facilitation, firsthand learning, and systems-level dialogue — built to increase understanding across sectors that rarely engage constructively in the same room.

The Textile Waste Expeditionary Summit extends that model into the textile sector, at a moment when U.S. policy momentum, infrastructure limits, and global waste consequences are converging.