Two Ends of the Waste Line

During the several days of SURVIVAL, thousands of Asian factories that produce clothes for the world’s biggest apparel companies will churn out tonnes of waste. The film by Finnish artist Anna Knappe provides an opportunity to cast a glance at a Bangladeshi town of Chittagong on the other side of the world. We see huge landfill sites – a side effect of mass production – and local people looking for scraps of cloth that could be reused or sold.
The textile industry is currently one of the largest and most environmentally harmful economic sectors in the world. Factory workers producing clothes for foreign corporations are often exposed to contact with chemicals that are dangerous to humans as well as the environment, and work in conditions that fail to meet the basic safety regulations. While in the West the powerful fashion corporations, such as H&M (the owner of the largest number of factories in Bangladesh), spend millions on advertising campaigns in an attempt to create their brand image as environmentally responsible businesses, the heap of rubbish in the East grows higher and higher.

fot. Małgorzata Kujda