Made on Earth

by Wolfgang Korn

  In many parts of the world, people open their plastic packaging and drop it on the floor – no matter where they’re standing. Many parts of Asia, South America and Africa are overflowing with plastic waste because of this attitude towards littering. In India and Bangladesh, hundreds of cows die every year because they wander through the streets feeding on waste stored in plastic bags (and even a cow’s strong stomach acid cannot digest polyethylene). While the mountains of rubbish grow in the developing world, the situation in Germany and many other European countries is completely different.

  Germans are the recycling world champions. Anything that cannot be recycled goes into landfill. But everything else is separated and recycled. Organic waste (food scraps, teabags, coffee grounds etc.) is put in the brown or green bin (depending on where you live). Paper goes into a special paper bin, and glass and bottles go into a separate recycling container. Then, there is the ‘Green Dot’ waste. This is a German scheme that allows manufacturers to contribute towards the recycling costs of their packaging. A green recycling logo on the packaging lets the consumer know that the packaging is recyclable. Most ‘Green Dot’ recycling is made up of plastics. Each and every yoghurt pot and butter tub is carefully washed and thrown into the yellow sack of the yellow recycling bin. Some of this plastic may still end up as landfill, but the majority of it will end up at a recycling centre where it will be sorted. The different plastics are compacted into balls, and suddenly go through a remarkable transformation. No longer is the plastic mere waste, but a valuable commercial material that can sell for up to €400 euros (around £325 pounds) a tonne. The plastic waste, or rather, valuable raw material, is then loaded onto container ships and usually sent to Asia. In the warehouse of the oil refinery in Chittagong, for example, is a container filled with exactly this type of recycled plastic from Germany.

  It’s the afternoon after the morning’s demonstration. The booking desk at the police headquarters in Chittagong is in the basement where it’s dark and humid. Mohmin is locked in a small room with 20 other demonstrators. None of them know what’s going to happen to them and they are all very scared. The seconds feel like minutes, and the minutes feel like hours. One after another they are taken away from the cell – and they don’t return. Is that a good or bad sign? the men wonder. Finally, Mohmin is led into a dark room, empty of furniture except for a table and two chairs. Mohmin has to give the police his full name, his address, and tell them where he works. “Who put you up to this?” they ask him over and over again.

  In the eyes of the police, the secret service and the government, it’s not the terrible state of the country that’s to blame for the demonstrations and the strikes, but some kind of evil ringleader who’s turning the poor against the government. Crack! Mohmin’s interrogator slaps him so hard his ears won’t stop ringing. What’s he supposed to say? Mohmin doesn’t know of any strike ringleader. One of his colleagues, Abdul told him about the strike. But he’s obviously not the ringleader . . . Crack!

  While Mohmin is still in the dark interview room, Kholil has managed to sneak back into work. In the recycling yard are endless containers. They are filled to the brim with balls of squashed plastic waste from Europe. The workers move the balls to the shredder to be cut up. The shredder turns the plastic into tiny flakes. These flakes are then washed and placed onto a conveyer belt. Kholil and many other young people stand at the conveyer belt and sort the flakes by hand. The coloured flakes are thrown to the left to be turned into sheets of plastic and packing materials. The white flakes are thrown to the right to be turned into a colourless yarn that can be dyed later. Kholil is trying to work faster than everybody else today. He wants to show his bosses how much he wants to work there. He’s too scared to go to a demonstration ever again, and he can’t help wondering, What’s happened to Mohmin?

  25 August 2005

  After a long interview, Mohmin is finally released. He manages to make it to work on time for the early shift, but he’s anxious they won’t let him in. His cheek is swollen and he has a black eye. The door opens, and standing next to one of the guards is the boss of the company. He approaches Mohmin.

  “What’s your name?” he demands.

  “Mohmin.”

  “I’m assuming you didn’t show up yesterday so you could go to the demonstration?”

  Mohmin doesn’t answer and averts his gaze.

  “I should have you fired!” shouts his boss. “But I have no one to work the spray nozzle and we’ve got so many orders I need everyone to work extra shifts. The weavers need to produce a lot of fleece, and suddenly everyone wants our polyester yarn. So get to it!”

  Mohmin rushes off and says a prayer of thanks.

  “I’m keeping my eye on you!” his boss shouts after him.

  Mohmin goes over to the oven where the polyethylene granules made from crude oil are combined with recycled plastic from Germany. He’s in charge of running the machine and making sure everything in the oven is at the correct temperature. He opens the right nozzles to produce extremely thin polyester fibres. Mohmin guides the threads through a cooling fan where they harden, but keep their elasticity. The polyester fibres are finally wound onto spools. The polyester that will be turned into fleece receives one more treatment. The fibres are distressed, so that they become thick and fluffy.

  These synthetic fibres have a special significance for Bangladesh. Seventy five per cent of the country’s exports are textiles, even though Bangladesh can’t produce cotton. Cotton has to be imported which shrinks the manufacturing companies’ profits. Instead, the textile industry in Bangladesh started producing new products in the last decade, synthetic fibres, notably polyester. Forty per cent of the world’s textiles are made from artificial fibres. As Bangladesh has its own crude oil source, it can produce synthetic fibres, such as the material for my fleece, without having to import expensive raw materials.

  5

  Tuk-tuk Races, Floods and Fleece: A Day in Bangladesh’s Textile Industry

  1 September 2005

  Outside the Hotel Intercontinental in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city, about 30 taxi drivers are swarming upon three European factory owners as they leave the building. All the drivers are trying their luck, anxious to gain the custom of the foreigners, or the ‘bideshi’ as they call them. Instead, the Europeans ignore the crowd of drivers, and get into Hassan’s taxi, as he’s the only driver waiting patiently in his tuk-tuk.

  There are thousands of these motorised, three-wheeled taxis in Asia, and everyone calls them tuk-tuks. The reason for this is clear as soon as the motor starts running. It makes a chugging sound that gets faster and faster and louder and louder, tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk, shaking the driver, passengers and luggage before they’ve even started moving. Once the journey starts, they race through the streets, squeezing down even the narrowest roads that cars can’t go down. Although when the ground is flooded, they often get stuck in the mud. It can take two or three people to pull them free!

  Tuk-tuks have a canopy overhead and can carry between two and six people. If necessary, they also carry large loads of rice, newspapers or furniture. If you’re a lucky tuk-tuk driver, like Hassan, you might get to ferry some bideshi around. Foreigners are always willing to pay a lot more for fares than locals. Although whatever Hassan earns, most of it will have to be given away almost immediately. Like most tuk-tuk drivers, Hassan’s taxi was bought with loaned money. The private loan company adds 10 per cent interest to what he still owes them, every month! This is why Hassan has to accept every job that comes his way. The Europeans want to go to a mill on the outskirts of the city. One of them asks him to drive, “Straight there, as quickly as possible!” The request for speed is completely unnecessary. Hassan’s livelihood depends on the fact that he drives one of the fastest tuk-tuk’s in Dhaka.

  Tuk-tuks may only have three wheels, but they also have exceptionally loud horns. On the streets of Bangladesh, a vehicle’s horn is almost as important as its engine: the louder the better. Beep B
eep! goes Hassan’s horn, telling pedestrians and other traffic to get out of the way, his tuk-tuk is coming through, and fast! A pleasant breeze takes the edge off the scorching heat, making the palm trees the tuk-tuk is driving past start to sway. The palm trees are growing in small gardens in front of rows of white painted houses. Are we still in Bangladesh? Yes. But Hassan’s tuk-tuk is speeding through one of the most affluent parts of Dhaka, known as Dhanmondi.

  Around 14 million people live in and around Dhaka. And at least half of them live in slums. Bangladesh is always portrayed the same way by the media, as a country suffering from floods, poor living conditions and hunger. But Bangladesh is also home to beaches, national parks, and mountains and forests where Bengal tigers can still be found. Not far from Dhanmondi, the view from the tuk-tuk is dramatically different: a sprawling slum with shoddily built factories lurking in the background like huge shadow puppets. Most of them are textile factories, as the region surrounding Dhaka specialises in textile production.

  Hassan is taking his European passengers to visit one of these factories. In fact, the bideshi are heading to the very same factory where our polyester yarn is being treated. A whole lorry load of yarn was transported from Chittagong to Dhaka four days ago, to be turned into fleece material. Even though it’s daytime and the factory is vast, it’s dark and sticky inside the building. A rhythmic clicking and clacking sound fills the enormous production room, where a few workers move deftly between the mechanical looms. These vast machines work exactly like hand-operated looms: rows of threads are stretched lengthways and are alternately moved up and down so that a shuttle carrying a cross-thread can be pushed through. The woven threads are then combed to create small loops in the fabric, which are then trimmed, leaving multiple tiny, soft bristles. These bristles are then scoured in order to open up the fibres and make the fleece fluffy and soft. All the trapped air between the fibres works as an excellent insulator. When it’s finished, the newly produced fleece material is rolled up into 40 kilogram bolts.

  Forty-five minutes later, Hassan drops off his passengers at the factory. Usually he would charge the bideshi four or five times the standard fare, but unluckily for him, a guard at the factory takes care of all taxi payments and he knows exactly how much the fare should be. On the up side, Hassan receives a new fare straight away. But instead of people, he’s transporting rolls of fleece. The cabin and the luggage rack are loaded up by four workers from the factory, and the tuk-tuk groans under the weight of it all. While Hassan and the guards watch the taxi being loaded up with bolts of fleece, the owner of the textile factory arrives in his brand new Mercedes Benz. The guard closest to Hassan says, “Life’s only easy for factory owners, politicians and generals. There are no good jobs for anyone else! Why does Allah let this happen?” Hassan just shrugs and gets into his tuk-tuk. He doesn’t disagree with the guard exactly, but he does think that not all bad jobs are equally ‘bad’. Being a guard, for example – he believes – is a fairly good job, for a ‘bad’ job. True, the pay isn’t great, but all you have to do is stand around, drink tea, chat with people and tell off the workers if they’re late or disruptive. The place he’s about to drive to now is where the really ‘bad’ jobs are – the fabric dyeing factory. He gets into his tuk-tuk and gives it some gas.

  The drive to the dyeing factory isn’t a particularly nice journey. He passes slums and run-down factories that have suffered badly from the heavy monsoon rain. Whole floors of the factories are still flooded, and the road is littered with water-filled potholes. It’s a very bumpy ride. When he arrives, the guards make sure Hassan doesn’t get to see much of the factory or what goes on there. Really, you just have to take a look at the water coming out of the drains at the back of the factory to find out. Sometimes it’s red, other days it’s blue or green, whatever colour the factory is using under the cover of darkness. The local water supply is poisoned by the chemicals that this factory, and others, are dumping directly into rivers and drains. Just washing in the water here can make people sick. The only relatively safe drinking water comes from underground wells, but during the monsoon season, overspill from the rivers can contaminate the wells.

  Despite the guards’ secrecy, Hassan knows what really happens in the huge dyeing workshop. Someone from his town told him. Inside are lots of tanks the size of small swimming pools. They are filled with lime, toxic bleaches and a variety of dyes. First the fabric is bleached to make it really white, so that the dyed colour will be really bright. Usually, the fabric is transported into the tanks of dye by machine, but the workers – often children – frequently have to put their bare arms into the machines to sort out blockages. The workers then climb into the tanks of poisonous dyes and stamp on the fabric with their bare feet. After being dyed, the fabric is hung up to dry on washing lines that are hundreds of metres long.

  Fleece material gets a final extra treatment. It’s pulled through a tank filled with a solvent to make sure that bobbles don’t form on the fibres later on.

  15 September 2005: 7:45am

  Hassan is back at the dyeing factory with his tuk-tuk. Five freshly-dyed rolls of fleece are loaded onto his taxi. One roll, which is smaller than all the others, is bright red. Once everything’s been loaded up, Hassan drives his tuk-tuk through the factory gate and heads towards the Bangladesh Garni International (BGI) textile factory.

  At the same time, outside the BGI textile factory, hundreds of seamstresses are waiting to start work. The doors will open in ten minutes. It’s quite difficult for most of the seamstresses to make sure they arrive on time, as many don’t have watches, and there are no clocks on the streets. Hassan reaches the factory just before half past eight. The gates open and he drives in. Just as the gate is closing again, a worker slips through. It is 17-year-old Taslima, who dashes into the factory and races up the stairs to her floor. One of the guards shouts after her: “You wretched toad! Next time I’ll slam the door in your face!” That’s what it’s usually like here: the young seamstresses – all between 16 and 30 years old – are not treated kindly by the management.

  Taslima works on the second floor where over 80 sewing machines stand in two long rows. She settles herself at her workstation right in the middle. This is where she will sit for the next eight to twelve hours doing nothing but sewing. There’s already a stack of pre-cut fleece pieces piled behind her: for the last two days her department has been trying to fulfil a massive order for fleece body warmers. She takes the back section of a fleece and places the right hand front section, with a pocket already sewn into it, on top. Tack, tack, tack, tack, she’s already stitched the shoulder. She sews the pieces together down one side. Tack, tack, tack, tack. And now the same for the left hand side . . . Taslima’s glad to be able to work at a sewing machine. For the first half of the year she was only a sewing assistant. This meant she had to help five seamstresses, but was only paid half of what they were. She learnt quickly however, and when a seamstress from her group left – suddenly she had a sewing machine of her own.

  Tack, tack, tack, tack. Taslima sews the collar on, and then sews up the bottom of the fleece. The zip is the final piece to be sewn in. The first of the countless fleeces that she will make today is finished. No one has even told her off for being late! Sometimes, when a seamstress is late for work they dock her wages, but Taslima has been lucky today. The workshop is packed, badly lit and there’s barely any fresh air. As the monsoon season has just come to an end, there’s water everywhere. It smells of mould and it’s unbearably hot. The mere effort of breathing makes you break into a sweat, and if you’re working hard, the sweat runs in small rivers down your back. By the second or third fleece, Taslima’s hands are working automatically. In her mind she flees this dark, sticky room and runs back to her family. They live outside in the countryside, a three-hour drive away by minibus. Every two or three months she gets a couple of days off so she can travel home to visit them. Often when she’s there the whole community gather at her uncle’s house to watch the only
television in the village. In Bangladesh there are approximately six televisions for every hundred people, and in the countryside that statistic is even lower. Whole villages watch TV together – it’s a social event. Bizarrely, up to three quarters of airtime is taken up by advertising. It’s insane to think that so many adverts are shown in a country where over half the population live on less than €1.50 euros (around £1 pound) a day, and will never be able to afford new cars, mobile phones, posh mustard or designer cosmetics.

  On the other hand, public television channel BTV shows lots of interesting programmes, including Taslima’s favourite show, a cartoon series called Meena. Meena is loved by girls and young women across Bangladesh. The 10-year-old protagonist, Meena, is a brave and outgoing young woman. She likes going to school, is the smartest member of her family and fights the oppression of women in Bangladesh. She campaigns against young girls getting married, and raises awareness about issues such as the lack of education that women are given, or the fact that girls are rarely taken to a doctor when they’re ill. Girls and women usually watch TV on their own. If any men are about, they usually complain about what the women are watching. They don’t like programmes like Meena. They want their women to stay at home, obey their husbands, and if they must work, to hand over their wages with no questions asked.

  Low Pay, High Risk