Social media in so-called fast fashion makes it easier than ever to find and purchase a constantly updating wardrobe. As we buy, many of us donate our cast offs and maybe feel we're making some positive difference. But ABC's chief climate correspondent, Ginger Zee, shows us where much of that donated clothing often ends up. Part of our network-wide Earth Day series, The Power of Us.

Today's a great day. Let me show you what I got from H&M because I don't even know what I got from H&M. We've seen the TikToks. Giant Timu unboxing. Huge. This dress. Fast videos of people consuming fast fashion.

The largest Zara haul you have ever seen.

I don't even know where to start. Are you joking? Showing off their hauls from a growing number of brands that often make trendy fashion quickly and cheaply available to consumers.

Now we have an instant fashion, throwaway fashion.

But what if I told you that these shopping habits have major repercussions, not just here at home, but also around the world? From production to purchase to where our clothes go when we're done with them, a long polluting journey that most of us are a part of. The average American buy 16 new items of clothing every three months. I've been on my own mission to do my part. Starting tomorrow for 90 days, I won't be buying any new clothes. If you do the No-No Clothes Challenge, you're saving almost 10 pounds in waste. Back in the early '90s, Americans bought 40 garments per year. Today, it's closer to 70, and only a fraction of that actually gets reused. Then that bag often gets blindly donated at a bin or a site like this. But a majority of the clothing that goes in there is not being resold or used here in the United States.

The volume is too high. There is no place for these garments to go. Clothing has the same carbon emissions as the aviation sector.

The US sends away more used clothing than any other country in the world. But there are companies and individuals starting to look at this problem and come up with solutions.

Globally, we grow about 85% of textiles into landfill. What that means, particularly for the United States, it's about 112 pounds per person per year of clothing, accessories, and home goods that go into the landfill.

Among them, Trashy, a textile take-back business that claims to be more transparent. In my closet, it's not just a donation pile. It has towels, old socks, underwear, and you'll take it all.

We take almost everything. We'll take your old fourth bra, we'll take leggings, we'll take worn jeans, and this is the place that we process it.

Good morning. I brought my own bag of used clothes to see how the process works.

When we talk about sorting and grading, that really is the process for figuring out what's in your bag, what has value, where it can go.

Trashy then figures out where your clothes can be reused for a price.

So that costs $20. You then receive what we call trashy cash, and that's our reward system. A $20 bag, you actually get $30 back in trashy cash.

Trashi has partnerships with many brands, from Regal Cinemas to Lululemon.

It's not just clothing for clothing.

You don't want to be the feedback loop that says, Go buy more.

Right. And if that is what you If you're going to do, that's great. That option is there, and that's the reality of everybody's lives. But we like the idea that you can cross-pollinate and spend it on travel or an experience.

After the clothes are sorted, they leave this warehouse in El Paso, Texas, and cross the border into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where the clothes get further processed and ultimately, shift internationally.

About 60% to North America and Central America. Then we provide about 20% to Eastern Europe, 10 % to Asia, and then it's a smattering of other countries into South America as well.

Trashi says they partner with this facility to keep their clothing out of landfills. They claim that each of their bags prevents 15 pounds of clothing from ending up in them.

To the best of our ability, nothing ends up in landfill.

This remote area in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile is where many of our used clothes go to die. Chile is the largest importer of used clothing in Latin America, and the fourth largest in the world. The Sandy Dunes transformed into an illegal dumping ground. At one point, so big, it was visible from space. Up to 60,000 tons of clothing get dumped here every year. Now, through frequent burning and burying, that massive pile has shrunk.

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Janet Del Transito Guzmán Ormeño lives in Alto Hospicio, near the landfills. She says that she's worried that the smoke from all that burning is making her daughter sick. The clothes first arrive in the nearby Port City of Iquique, where barges from all over the world show up.

. Jose Miguel Carvajal is the governor of the region.

He says that the dumping problem started about a decade ago.

The governor says that the lack of proper oversight and accountability from the higher levels of government has exacerbated the problem. We reached out to Chile's Ministry of Environment and did not receive a response.

Some of the folks that live there have turned the overflow of used clothing into a business opportunity, like in this open air market. Some clothing even with tags still on.

. Maria Fernanda Pizarra Torres is an artisan trying to make beauty from these ashes, taking advantage of this seemingly endless supply of free material right at her doorstep...

Maria takes 15 to 20 pairs of jeans every time she visits the landfills. Her boutique in Iquique shows off all her upcycled goods. Large-scale problems like these call for large-scale solutions. Experts say legislation can be a start. In Washington, the Bipartisan Americas Act was introduced last month to provide financial incentive to companies that reuse materials. In one of the world's fashion capitals, the Fashion Act, a New York state bill aiming to bring more transparency to the industry. Big name celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, and Angelina Jolie are behind it.

Fashion needs basic guardrails in place so that the balance of growth is balanced out with the needs of the planet.

The proposed law would require the biggest clothing sellers to disclose their environmental social due diligence policies or face fines. There's also a transparency issue in the back-end.

Yeah. So it's an opaque system. The problem is the volume.

But there are some things you can do, too. If you're talking to an individual, what is the most powerful choice they can make? To change their relationship with fashion?

One, from a personal purchasing standpoint, is how many times we're wearing that garment. And so it's an invitation to love your clothes and wear them more. Then second, we are people who have a voice with our policymakers to say, We want this piece of legislation passed. We need to have basic rules in place so that we can have a system that is going to thrive today, tomorrow, and in the future.