Made on Earth (5 page)

The tropical temperatures don’t last all year round in Bangladesh. For almost half the year nothing can be grown. In March, April and October, tropical hurricanes and storms batter the country, and June to September is monsoon season. High winds blow blankets of cloud across the country and there’s almost non-stop heavy rainfall. Most of Bangladesh is made up of marshland, intersected by three large rivers. During the monsoon, as much water as is contained in all the rivers in Europe flows through these three rivers. When the water is pushed back into the river delta by storms at sea, this causes major flooding.

At the moment, Bangladesh has no way to prevent this from happening, and every year, water floods the fields. Each year the flooding gets worse because of the rising sea levels caused by global warming. In 2004, the homes of 34 million Bangladeshis – almost a quarter of the population – were flooded. Richer countries can protect themselves with sea walls and high dams, but there are no protective measures available in Bangladesh. Even when funding is received in order to build dams, the government is so corrupt and badly run that the money is almost always spent elsewhere. By the year 2050, about a sixth of the country will be permanently underwater. Around 20 million people will loose their homes and livelihoods forever.

24 August 2005

It is now morning. Mohmin and Kholil don’t head towards the harbour for work as usual, but instead walk into town, to the main street in front of the train station. More and more workers assemble there. Some of them are wearing helmets and are armed with sticks. On the banners and placards that many of them are holding are messages about pay, safety and job security:

“Down with corporations!”

“Down with the government!”

“GENERAL STRIKE!”

The signs are written in Bengali and also in English so that foreign reporters and people watching the news in other countries will understand them. The assembled workers are calling for a general strike. This is when all workers and employees across the whole city refuse to work. Buses, ships and trucks come to a standstill, factories stop running and shops are closed. There have been three strikes already in Chittagong this year. When a general strike happens in Chittagong, the whole country shuts down, as almost everything Bangladesh produces is shipped out of Chittagong harbour. When the harbour and the refinery stop working, all manufacturing
has
to stop. This time, the government has had enough, and its response is aggressive. The police and the army are mobilised and sent to the harbour, the oil refinery and the large crossroads in the centre of town. However, the police and army presence isn’t enough to silence the workers and strike leaders. They form a group and start walking down Station Road. They’re heading for the Dhaka Trunk Road that leads to the harbour.

Kholil and Mohmin hold their home-made banner high, but they only make it a few hundred metres down the road. The police have blocked off the road with riot vans and water canons. In front of them are two rows of police wearing helmets, carrying shields and heavy batons. There’s a sudden popping noise. Are the police firing at them? The strike leaders try to calm the crowd. “Don’t panic!” they cry. “It’s only tear gas! Cover your faces! Don’t rub it into your eyes!” Then the police rush forward. They use their shields to shove aside anyone who’s in their way and brutally hit the demonstrators with their batons. Kholil has never been so scared in his entire life. He drops the banner, flees down a side street and runs away. Mohmin, on the other hand, won’t let the banner go. He is surrounded by police trying to tear it out of his hands, but with great determination, he holds on. Moments later he is hit over the head with a baton, and two police officers drag him into a riot van. While sirens wail outside, the harbour’s oil refinery is put back into action, under police supervision.

Meanwhile, our mixture of crude oil, delivered a few days ago, is being pumped through the long pipelines of the refinery. In this labyrinth of tunnels, oil containers and machines steam, hiss and rattle. The first process to refine oil is to heat the crude oil to 400° Celsius in a 50 metre high cylinder, known as a ‘distillation column’. Here, the different components that make up crude oil separate: gases and light petrol evaporate and rise upwards, while tar and lubricating oil sink to the bottom. Somewhere in the middle is coal, which is made of carbon, and just below that is ethylene, the raw material for many kinds of plastic. These basic components are then separated out, and moved on for the second stage of processing.

The ethylene is combined with a catalyst – the reactive metal antimony – under high pressure, and then heated to 240° Celsius. During this process, the individual ethylene molecules gain the ability to bond into a single mass. This creates polyethylene, a substance made up of a seemingly endless molecule chain. No other substance is so stable and yet so malleable. At the bottom of the machine in which this process takes place are six holes. The white-grey polyethylene is squeezed out of the holes in pencil-thick strings, almost like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube. The threads of polyethylene are then cut into smaller segments and cooled. These hazelnut size pieces are called ‘granules’ and are the raw material for a huge range of products. Polyethylene is a truly magical substance. At 120° Celsius it becomes a liquid, and can either be formed into the desired shape or pressed into thin sheets. Polyethylene and similar man-made substances are the foundations for our globalised, consumer-driven world. These materials are used to make carrier bags, packaging, mobile phone covers, iPods and laptops. Various medications and colours used in paint and foods also contain components derived from crude oil. Most polyethylene however, is used for packaging. In a globalised world where products travel long distances between the manufacturer and the consumer, packaging is essential. There’s packaging for packaging. There’s even packaging for
used
packaging – here in Germany we have special yellow rubbish bags for plastic recycling.

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!