Original subtitles

[♪♪♪]

[Mark Angelo]: My dad, in the late '60s,

brought home a photograph of Earth

as seen from outer space,

and I was so impressed by it,

but one, it made me realize, in the overall scheme of things,

that our planet is quite small and quite finite.

The other thing that was very noticeable

is, I mean, clearly it's a blue planet,

but of all the water on this Earth,

97% is saline, it's in the oceans,

2% is locked up in ice.

That only leaves us 1%

that's found in lakes and rivers,

and a lot of that water is not accessible.

So really, when you talk about it,

when you really you come down to it,

we have a very small amount of water,

and that's got to accommodate,

ot only the needs that humans have,

for drinking water,

but it's got to accommodate all of those other needs, agricultural needs, industrial needs,

so I think we have to treat water

in a much more respectful way,

I think we have to treat rivers in a much more respectful way,

than we have in the past.

[Kumi Naidoo]: The wars of the future

Will not be fought about oil.

The wars of the future is going to be fought about water.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

[Narrator]: China: with more

than 1.3 billion people, this is the most populous country on Earth.

The stress to supply clean water is almost insurmountable,

as their rivers are flowing disaster zones.

Worldwatch Institute wrote

that 70% of China's lakes and rivers are contaminated,

which leaves little fresh water for the people who rely on them.

China has gone through a major transformation. Once an impoverished farming-reliant country,

it has now morphed into "The Factory of the World."

No other country exports more goods than China does,

but that came at a high price.

The widespread dumping of toxic chemicals

has poisoned rivers and groundwater.

Environmental issues in China.

You know, water pollution

is damaging the freshwater biodiversity,

but more than that,

it's also creating such a big public health risk.

You know, potentially now

we have hundreds of millions of people

exposed to water pollution.

[Narrator]: Ma Jun is one of China's

Most prominent environmental activists.

He was named

one of the 100 most influential persons in the worldby Time magazine.

Ma's book, titled "China's Water Crisis,"

was that country's first book

focusing on China's pollution problem.

So many people live along the rivers,

and in those countrysides, you know,

when the rivers got contaminated,

they would dig a well,

and then the shell aquifer easily got contaminated, then we started seeing people getting sick,

and then the extraordinarily high rate of cancer

and other diseases cropped up, you know,

cancer villages cropped up along those rivers.

And acknowledged as, you know, having unusually high cancers

associated with poor water quality.

They do have problems with drinking water supply,

with blue-green algal toxins,

so there's a high incidence of liver cancers

that are associated with that.

[Tianjie Ma]: It's always a disturbing experience

looking at these pictures,

so sometimes I choose not to look at them too often,

but you have to go there and you have to document them,

otherwise these people's voice doesn't get heard,

and they need people to be aware

that the cost of development that China is suffering from.

[Bunn]: The approach that's been taken in China up until now

Has been, you know,

firstly focused on development and the economy, and that's been done with a full acknowledgment

of what that will do to the environment,

so I think a full understanding

that the environment will pay the price of that,

and now they've reached the point in that development

where acknowledging the social and environmental

and the health problems associated with it,

ow is the time to act.

[Tianjie]: Recently we have big cities

Where their whole drinking water source

are being threatened by pollution.

You have, in past years, several cases

where, like, cities with several million population

Because they fear that their drinking water source

is being contaminated.

[Bunn]: They've gone through a very, very rapid stage

Of industrialization,

so, you know, in the last 40-50 years,

we've seen massive industrialization,

a lot of hydropower development,

and a lot of industries developing

without adequate pollution control,

cities that are growing at an incredible rate,

so, you know, the number of cities of millions of people

has really expanded,

and so the waterways have taken the brunt of that development,

and as you can imagine,

many of them are in an appalling state.

[Narrator]: In response to widespread

environmental and health problems,

activists in China

focused their investigations on water pollution, and discovered one of the major sources

led them to the western markets,

with the fashion industry as one of the key suspects

in the destruction of China's lakes and rivers.

These activists have produced campaigns

to create consumer awareness on the issue.

These are toxic substances

released into our precious lakes and rivers

by textile manufacturers,

just for printing and dyeing our clothes.

Fashion is too beautiful to have anything to do with this mess.

We're here to challenge it.

[Narrator]: Dhaka, the largest city in Bangladesh,

and one of its dirtiest.

The toll of becoming

The world's second-leading clothing exporter, after China,

can be seen and smelled

from the riverbanks surrounding Dhaka.

Is one of the most polluted rivers in the world,

and the manufacturers of cheap clothing

can claim some of this responsibility.

The outflow from Bangladesh's garment and tannery industries

has contributed heavily

to what experts describe as a water pollution catastrophe.

[Angelo]: Looking at the city, what I have seen so far,

it's a sprawling city,

a huge city of 15 million people,

sixth biggest in the world,

also I can see that pollution is an issue here.

It was recently ranked

as the second worst city to live in

from a quality of life and environmental point of view,

and certainly things like textiles and tanneries

are a part of that.

I do plan on getting in the river in the days ahead,

I do plan on visiting the tanneries,

and certainly it's my goal

to learn a lot more about these issues.

[Narrator]: Mark Angelo,

A celebrated international river conservationist

and member of the Explorers Club,

is on a global expedition

taking him to some of the most polluted rivers

around the world.

His goal is to document

the state of the waterways of our planet,

and his research leads him to Bangladesh,

where he is about to discover

the dark side of the fashion industry.

[Angelo]: I had read a lot about the Buriganga river.

I knew that it was

one of the most polluted rivers on Earth.

This is an area, and particularly, this river

is a place that's heavily impacted

by the textile and tannery sectors,

so I thought it was important to come and see it

and get a feel as to how it got to this state

and what could possibly be done to turn things around.

And as I stand here,

When I catch the wind in the face, the smell is unbelievably bad.

It's atrocious.

It's hard to imagine a stream more polluted than this one.

About a third of the pollution that comes into here is sewage,

most of the sewage in the city is untreated,

but about two thirds of the pollution here

is all from the tanneries up river,

it's all industrial pollution, chemicals, heavy metals,

so this waterway is so polluted it cannot sustain any life,

and the pollution gets so bad during the dry season

that there are parts of this canal

that you can literally light on fire.

Who speak out

against the government and factory owners

who are ignoring costly environmental regulations,

but there are some who take pollution very seriously.

One such man is Pinaki Roy.

As the deputy chief reporter for Dhaka's Daily Star,

Pinaki's beat is the environment,

but his passion is for the river.

[Roy]: I have passion for them.

I was born here and grown up here.

I love rivers.

Well, people who live by the river,

they really feel sad about the situation,

about the condition of the river now,

so they say, "Can't you do something

so that the river is clean again?"

[Narrator]: Pinaki investigates in areas

where textile companies group together

behind high brick walls.

It's here where he gathers evidence of rampant pollution.

While companies make it difficult to see what's going on

in their guarded compounds,

tell-tale channels all lead to outflows

that release toxic liquids

straight into the rivers surrounding the city.

[Roy]: There are hundreds of thousands

of garments industries in Dhaka City,

and those industries basically, you know,

discharging their pollution, you know, everywhere,

so now, every part of the city,

you go to the river, and you'll find it polluted.

This is all the untreated effluent

Coming from the garments and dyeing industries

and directly going into the river.

This water is so toxic, there is no aquatic life,

And local communities,

they cannot use this water anymore.

They have set up industries for years,

but they have never set up ETP, effluent treatment plant,

so it is not that they don't have money,

it is all about intention.

They don't have intention about clean environment,

so that's why they don't do it.

They should respect the river, but they don't.

They are doing this just to increase their profit.

[Angelo]: One of my very first days,

I walked down and I found a boatman

and I asked him if he would take me out on the river,

and he was happy to,

but getting out on the river was a real eye-opener,

and it was depressing.

The colour of the water was ink black.

The water also had a thickness to it,

and as our oar cut through the water,

it the water literally rolled, almost like heavy oil.

The river was more chemical than water.

On my journey over the last couple of years,

I've seen so many rivers that are so, so polluted.

Probably the Buriganga, though,

is the most polluted of the rivers I've seen.

Some of the things

that I observed while floating the river,

just looking at the water, feeling the texture of it,

the smell of it,

knowing it was totally off, totally unnatural... that saddens me deeply.

[Narrator]: Much of Dhaka's pollution problem

emanates from this area of the city,

Hazaribagh,

home to more than 200 tanneries.

This is ground zero for a lot of toxic waste.

Raw material enters through the doors of the tanneries

to be transformed into wide swaths of leather

that will be shipped out of the country

and used in the manufacturing of shoes, purses,

and other leather goods.

What ends up on the fashion runways

and in many of our own closets

has its noxious beginnings

in this filthy section of the city.

I probably won't have to go to Hell

to find out how it looks.

If one goes to Hazaribagh tannery,

that would tell you probably how Hell looks like.

[Narrator]: Syeda Rizwana Hasan

is Bangladesh's chief environmental lawyer.

[Hasan]: Dhaka has been ranked

as the second most uninhabitable cities of the world,

and this extremely hazardous export-oriented industry

is actually contributing

to that process of making Dhaka uninhabitable.

I would say even 15 years back, the river water was usable.

You could still boat on the river

without having that bad smell.

We saw a living river,

what is now being described as a biologically dead river,

and what is more frustrating for us to see

is, despite all the movements to save the river,

despite the court coming forward to protect the river,

the condition of the river is deteriorating

with each passing day.

[Roy]: If you visit those rivers in any day,

you'll find that different colour,

you know, blue, red, black,

all directly going to the river.

[Narrator]: Pinaki Roy is following a lead

on a story he's working on,

taking him inside one of the tanneries

in the Hazaribagh area.

Normally, cameras are not allowed in,

but by focusing on Pinaki, the reporter,

we're able to capture a seldom-seen view

of what goes on

behind the walls of a typical tannery operation.

Who have been dealing with those chemicals directly,

they are touching those chemicals in bare hands,

without any gloves.

A lot of underage children, like below 18,

they work here,

and many of them do not have even boots, gloves.

They complain a lot,

but they think this is their fate.

Now, see?

Now they have a tea break, like, a working break, so after the break,

they are having their, you know, little snacks

in bare hands without proper cleaning,

so in this way,

maybe they consume a lot of chemicals. I have been doing this for a few years now,

and time to time I keep on visiting,

and I feel it's awful.

This is the heart of the tanning district,

widely viewed as being

one of the most polluted places on Earth,

and there are chemicals everywhere.

I smell chemicals, it totally pervades the air,

I feel like I'm breathing them in.

My throat burns, I feel it in my eyes,

so this is not a healthy place to be,

and yet there are 180,000 people that live around here,

almost 20,000 work here in the tanneries

and get exposed to this every day.

[Hasan]: If you go to the Hazaribagh tannery,

if you see how people are living there,

there are small children

who are passing through the tannery area every day

to go to the school,

and they have lost their sensory adaptation. They can't smell anymore. It's totally gone.

The physicians say people often come to them with gastric,

with ulcers, with chest pain,

and obviously with skin diseases and some diseases like cancer,

Local people won't complain,

because they know that even if they complain,

there is hardly any relief,

but I think the consumers have a big role to play there,

because your consumption pattern

doesn't have to be responsible only,

you have to make sure that it's not exploitative.

[Narrator]: Big box retailers from the West

Look to Bangladesh

for low cost/high output leather products and clothing. The cost in human suffering producing cheap clothing

has been well documented,

but for global brands

that buy clothing from Bangladeshi factories,

pollution rarely gets the same attention

as workplace conditions,

and local environmentalists

say global buyers have done far too little.

[Roy]: Accidents happened in the garment sector,

like a Rana Plaza accident

where more than 1,000 people died.

After that, I found in Twitter, in social media, you know,

a lot of criticism against those, you know, retailers,

who are buying from Bangladesh,

who are buying from those garments,

so there are a lot of criticisms,

and I would say, you know,

the buyer from the West, he wants cheaper clothes.

He cannot, you know, pollute our environment.

Buying these cheap clothes, they are also responsible,

because they are pushing these industries

for more and more cheaper clothes.

This is a question of ethics.

They are not caring about the environment.

There are some who just want to, you know,

make their production costs cheaper and cheaper.

For producing low-cost jeans, shirts, t-shirts,

people around the world buy them,

but the reality is that low-cost clothing

has a very high cost attached to it.

Look at what we've seen

from both an environmental and public health perspective,

it's a calamity,

and this kind of disaster is something that I've seen

on river after river after river,

so once again I think a key point

is that there is often a very high cost

attached to low-cost clothing.

[Hasan]: Just because you want to get something

At a lower price

doesn't mean you would allow a precious resource like a river

Doesn't mean you would allow people

to die in some other part of the world

because they don't have

a regular health monitoring system, and you would never know

that by buying something at a lower price,

you are actually contributing

to the death, illness, suffering of people

in some other part of this world.

If people of Bangladesh do not have water tomorrow,

They'll have to find another place

to go where they'll have water,

which means that we'll have to migrate out,

which means that the rest of the world

will also be disturbed

if we are disturbed in this very small country, and everyone has a responsibility

to protect the mother Earth.

If I am an environmentalist,

I can't say I care only about the rivers of Bangladesh.

I have to care about the rivers of the world.

[Angelo]: These are conditions

that the workers there have to live with every day, so you can't help but wonder

the toll that's taking on their health,

and I don't think it was a coincidence

that we did not see very many older people

working in the tanneries.

I think if you have to work with those chemicals every day,

in those conditions every day,

I think that's the recipe for a much shorter life.

[♪♪♪]

[Narrator]: India, a nation of extreme contrasts,

with some of the most sacred, and dirtiest,

rivers in the world.

It's difficult to imagine today,

But for some farmers who live on the banks of the Ganges,

there was a time in living memory

when the water in the river was clean enough to drink.

Today, the rivers they revere as goddesses

are in severe decline.

Some of India's greatest rivers begin as pristine water sources,

but not far downriver, they become open flowing sewers.

One of the key issues

is what to do with the excrement of about 600 million people who are defecating in the open.

Studies have found that untreated sewage

is the single most important source

of water pollution in India.

While more than half a billion people

rely on one of its most holy rivers, the Ganges,

they also contribute to its abuse

in the most elemental way.

[Angelo]: Varanasi is an amazing city.

It's known as the eternal city.

It embodies the essence of Hinduism,

and because of its close proximity to the Ganges,

it's a very well-known pilgrimage site.

More than a million pilgrims come here every year.

Some come to take a holy dip at this location

to cleanse their soul, cleanse them of their sins.

Others come to spend their final days here.

They'll die here

and have their ashes scattered in the river in the belief

that that will aid in their path towards heaven.

It will liberate the soul and free them

from that never-ending cycle of reincarnation.

This city has an incredible spiritual energy,

and nowhere else on Earth

does life, death, and religion blend so seamlessly.

I've always loved India, I've been here many, many times,

but I've always been disappointed

in the state of the Ganges river.

It's a river that I have come to know really well,

I've been to the headwaters, I've been to the mouth,

I've paddled or travelled along much of the rest of it.

It's not the biggest river in the world,

it's not the longest,

but it may be the most venerated,

particularly by the 500 million people

that live within its basin.

[Sunita Narain]: I think it's when faith,

Which is very powerful,

becomes your weakness.

I mean, there is no doubt

that the Ganga has tremendous self-cleaning capacities;

It's why there is such a sense of the fact

that this is a river which can regenerate itself,

It is also something that we have to accept

that that river is polluted.

We have defiled it beyond its cleansing abilities,

and that we have to clean it up,

and it's crying that it needs cleaning up.

[Narrator]: Religion and science

Are uncomfortable bedmates in India.

To live by the Ganges and see obvious pollution

doesn't sway those who believe

in the river's ability to cleanse itself.

Religious men,

who hold great influence with India's population, believe in the river's purity and sing its praises,

while environmentalists hope their influence

would be used to convince more people

to clean up the river.

[singing]

[Narain]: I think it's the people who hold the faith

that must talk to people and make them understand

that yes, the river

has intrinsic self-cleansing abilities,

and we have faith

that the river is the most important being,

but yet, we as a modern society have even breached

its own abilities to clean itself,

and we have to do something about it,

and you have to be able to bring science into religion.

The fact is,

if you have dissolved oxygen levels of zero, the river is dead, call it what you want.

You just haven't officially cremated it,

but it's dead.

[Narrator]: Allahabad.

Nowhere in the world is faith exhibited

more than in this city.

Here at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges rivers,

110 million people gather to celebrate the Kumbh Mela.

[Narain]: We are a country which holds rivers sacred,

and yet we are committing hydrocide.

We are deliberately murdering our rivers.

And if you worship nature,

then the last thing that you can do

is to defile it or degrade it.

[Avikal Somvanshi]: We are going for Kumbh Mela.

It's happening today, and it's massive.

Like, last Kumbh Mela in 2001

saw a crowd of almost 70 million people

turn up during the festival.

Each of the bathing days which have passed,

the crowd has been 15% to 25% more

than what they had estimated,

so we're going to, most probably,

we are going to have 20 million, 25 million today.

Of this size and scale anywhere in the world, okay?

I think it's important to understand that they come

because they worship the river, they celebrate the river.

Growing up, Kumbh was something spectacular,

Something which my city is known for.

It's the biggest gathering of human beings on Earth.

As I have aged now,

I have realized that excitement

was actually a kind of fear which I harbour,

'cause the things I had to live with,

before the Kumbh started and after the Kumbh finished,

is something which is nothing to be proud of.

[♪♪♪]

Which is called Sangam,

where the Ganges and the Yamuna meet,

so it's that area

where all the activities are surrounded.

[Narain]: It's time, in India,

that we did some very serious stock-taking

about what's going wrong

and why are we, a generation of Indians,

becoming a generation which is losing, to my mind,

its most sacred asset, a river.

[Angelo]: The Kumbh Mela is this spectacle,

this great celebration of the Ganges River,

and the fact that all the human waste

from the 100 million visitors there at present

is allowed to seep into the soil or flow directly into the river,

I think that's wrong.

I love this country, I love the culture,

I love the customs, the colours, even the chaos,

but I've always been saddened

about the state of the Ganges river,

particularly knowing that it is revered so much

and it is worshipped as a goddess,

and it seems like a bit of a disconnect

that it can be worshipped on one hand,

and we can allow her to get so polluted on the other.

For them, the river is still a goddess and still holy,

O matter what is flowing in the river.

You'll tell them the river is getting polluted,

they'll say yes, the river is getting polluted,

it's very dirty, the water is so bad,

but risking your own salvation by avoiding to do the ritual

Is something they cannot fathom with.

The Kumbh is a tough one,

But, I mean, I take back from it. I mean, I'm a...

I mean, I'm a Hindu,

but not the one who would go to the river for rituals,

more for the beauty of it,

but I take back with it enormous awe,

and the river means so much to so many people in my country,

and I think that is what is beautiful.

[Narrator]: On a day like this,

When three times the population of New York City

gathers on the river's banks,

the government has ordered cities upstream

to stop polluting the Ganges

so that the faithful

will have a clean river to bathe in.

Kanpur, a city of four million,

Is among the world's top 10 cities

with the worst air pollution,

and is the second most polluted city in India.

It's the leather capital of the region,

And the tanneries have been ordered

to shut down during the Kumbh Mela,

and, for the most part, they have.

Today being one of the main bathing days,

this drain seems to be closed,

but after the main bathing days,

it will be as usual.

You can see the black viscous chemicalized water

going to the river.

[Narrator]: The tannery district,

established along the Ganges river

during the British colonial rule,

is Kanpur's economic mainstay

and a major source of pollution.

[Jaiswal]: Kanpur hosts 400-odd leather factories and tanneries,

and these tanneries use dyes, acids,

basic chrome sulfate,

other heavy-metal containing chemicals,

and the wastewater they generate

is a cocktail of these chemicals

which are lethal to human health and other life also.

[Narrator]: Zafar Lari owns a mid-sized tannery in Kanpur,

And while he understands

that the tannery district may be suffering

from a poor reputation among environmental groups,

he also believes that it's a perception not deserved,

and he denies that any of his tannery wastewater

runs into the Ganges.

I think they have some misconceptions,

misunderstanding,

It is about more than three kilometres far from here.

It is impossible to send a drop of water

directly to the Ganges.

[Jaiswal]: This is a mixture of tannery wastewater.

It contains a variety of chemicals,

the same chemicals

which are used by leather factories and tanneries.

I believe the water that comes from the tannery area

is not with the effluent from the industry.

It could be...

I hope it could be domestic waste.

It is quite impossible

the water should directly goes anything from the Ganges.

It is impossible.

First we have a drain system, then we have a channel system,

then we have the municipal water discharge system...

It is quite impossible.

Exactly it is impossible. We can say that.

[Narrator]: At the edge of the tannery district

Sits a holding area

containing streams and ponds filled with noxious liquids. From this area, large pipes shoot out

and run for many miles,

heading towards the Ganges river.

This water is being put into this irrigation canal.

It irrigates around 2,500 hectares of land,

And you can see

that this water is not properly treated

and is not safe for irrigation.

In every family,

you will find someone afflicted

with some kind of a skin problem,

ranging from rashes, boils, numbness in the limbs.

It also contains known carcinogen chromium,

so maybe people have cancers.

Chromium has been reported in cattle milk

and also agricultural produce,

so this heavy metal has entered the food chain

and is finally reaching us

and affecting the health of the people.

[Narrator]: This stretch of the river

is extremely contaminated,

but life in the villages sitting on its banks

goes on as usual.

While filming there,

We observed a man poling his boat to shore.

His small craft was filled with a couple hundred fish.

He told us he had found his catch

just floating on top of the river.

Newspapers reported that the dead fish

were the result of a chemical spill

into the river earlier that day.

The man was cleaning the fish to feed his family,

and took the rest of his catch

to sell at the local market that afternoon.

[Angelo]: When a river has been so polluted or so abused

for many, many years,

you can't turn it around overnight.

I look at a country like India,

I look at this river we are on now.

It's going to be a huge challenge to turn this around.

There are huge issues

pertaining to sewage and industrial pollution, and on a river like the Ganges,

I think the young generation that's coming along,

I believe in the years ahead,

they will have the same reverence for this river

that their parents had,

but as part of that

I also think they'll see an obligation

to have a cleaner Ganges.

[♪♪♪]

[Narrator]: The Zambezi, a true life-giving river,

worthy of its reputation

of being one of the great rivers of the world.

Mark Angelo has made the trip here before,

a far different river than the Ganges,

and a place he finds rejuvenates his soul;

a nice reminder of what he works towards

for all rivers.

[Angelo]: The thing I love about the Zambezi

is the diversity,

and the wildlife here is incredibly prolific.

Animals gather in huge numbers beside the river

and often right in the river,

and to see all of that from a canoe, up close,

virtually at water level,

is an unforgettable experience,

so in many ways,

I look particularly at this part of the Zambezias an example of what a river can and should be.

[Narrator]: Mark Angelo is an internationally celebrated

River conservationist

and the founder of World Rivers Day,

an event held to clean rivers

in more than 60 countries around the world.

The United Nations has recognized his work

protecting what Mark calls

"the vital arteries of this planet."

Mark often mentions that rivers run through his soul,

in a journey that began

as a young boy growing up in Los Angeles.

[Angelo]: I grew up with an interesting background.

My parents were very much involved in old Hollywood,

the movie industry,

and it was a...

you know, Hollywood was a fascinating place

to grow up in the '50s,

but my interest took me elsewhere.

You know, I happened to live by the Los Angeles River,

a river that had been destroyed in many ways,

totally encased in a big concrete culvert,

and I used to hang out there a lot,

but I didn't have to be very old before I realized

that's not the way a river was meant to be.

On the other side of the coin, though,

we lived right next door to a place called Griffith Park.

It was a 4,000-acre urban oasis,

a wild oasis in the middle of the city,

and I could go out my door across the street

and be up in the hills and just hike for hours,

and I got to know

a lot of the small creeks and streams there,

so by the time I was 15 or 16, I was really into the outdoors. Then I went, at the age of 17, to the University of Montana,

and I got into fly fishing and paddling

in a very big way,

and that cemented things for me,

and at that stage,

I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life working in a field related to river conservation.

As I got older,

I started to look at rivers in a much broader way for the many values they possess,

and now I look at them

as literally life-lines in the broadest sense,

and at this stage of my life, whenever I'm on a river,

it does much to rejuvenate my spirit and my soul,

and the world seems a saner place.

[Narrator]: Jakarta, a city of 28 million,

the capital of Indonesia.

Cosmopolitan,

with wide avenues and top-of-the-line shopping, Jakarta is also at the headwaters

of one of the most polluted rivers in the world,

the Citarum.

This river of garbage is a shameful example

Of mankind's inhumanity to the environment,

and the crime largely goes unpunished by law.

The Citarum was once a gentle flowing river

where fishermen cast their nets,

pulling in a bounty of healthy fish

that fed their families.

Today, it's a river in crisis,

choked by the domestic waste of nine million people,

and thick with the castoffs

from hundreds of factories along its banks.

It's hard to imagine

that 80% of the population of Jakarta

relies on this river for their drinking water.

This river bubbles like a witch's cauldron

because of the pollution that has sunk to the bottom

and is off-gassing.

More than 500 factories,

most of them producing textiles

which require chemical treatment,

line the banks of this 200-mile river,

spewing waste into the water.

Everybody has the right to know

what is being discharged by a factory,

how much is being discharged, per day, per year, per month.

This information is important

so we know what is in our water and we can control it.

[Narrator]: In Indonesia, researchers allege

The textile industry is a major contributor

to the poor health of the Citarum River.

In Citarum, it is well known

that there are a lot of what we call anonymous pipes,

so this kind of pipe appears in the middle of nowhere,

like this, so the pipe is underground.

You can not really see

this factory that is dumping this, and also it is a shared pipe,

making it even more difficult to know who is the perpetrators.

[Narrator]: While the source of this particular pipe

is cloaked in mystery,

these researchers have had success

in uncovering what they call

"a criminal case of water pollution."

These three were part of a larger group

who spent two years

following a trail of pollution on the Citarum River.

Environmental activists collected samples of wastewater

discharged from the PT Gistex factory in Bandung,

an area known for its textile manufacturing.

[Meutia]: Before we actually took samples,

We did field research

making sure that this pipe really belongs to the company. We found that this company emits toxic material to the water.

[Narrator]: In a report titled

"Toxic Threads: Polluting Paradise,"

Greenpeace has published a story

of big brands and water pollution

in Indonesia.

In their report,

Greenpeace states that major international brands are conducting business with suppliers such as PT Gistex,

who has been linked to toxic water pollution

and murky business practices.

One of these brands, they write, is Gap,

which Greenpeace states

has been linked to toxic water scandals before.

Here in Indonesia, we have a textile manufacturer

That is supplying for Gap, and Gap is a global company,

And similar to other companies

that have been linked to pollution

in other places in Asia,

we have made demands for them to clean up the supply chain.

[Narrator]: We reached out

to Gap head office in San Francisco

for a comment on their connection to water pollution

and the PT Gistex factory in Bandung.

They wrote back stating:

"As for your question regarding PT Gistex,

we were alerted to the Greenpeace report

on PT Gistex in Indonesia

and confirmed to Greenpeace

that we do not source from their textile facility,

but that we do work with the parent company,

PT Gistex Group.

We reiterated to the parent company

the importance of adherence

to Gap Inc's code of vendor conduct,

including provisions regarding environmental health

and safety and chemical restrictions,

as well as compliance with Indonesian law.

Gap Inc. supports additional initiatives

that are underway to help conserve fresh water

and improve the environmental performance

of dyeing and finishing facilities."

We can't do too much about history,

but let's make sure moving forward

that the leaders of the fashion industry,

the leaders of all industries that engage in pollution,

are becoming much more aggressive

in cleaning up their act,

and to ensure that they do not have to make money

on the basis of environmental destruction.

[♪♪♪]

[Narrator]: China: this country has

some of the most beautiful rivers in the world,

but also some of the most toxic.

[Angelo]: Major river systems are often in pretty good shape

At the very top end,

but as they move down river, they degrade.

They pick up an increasing number

of pollutants and contaminants,

and that's very much the case

with the Li river here in Guilin.

In its very upper reaches,

it's one of the cleaner waterways in China,

but as it moves along,

it eventually merges with the Pearl.

It then becomes one of the most polluted.

Is a fundamental human need and a basic human right,

and yet here in China,

two thirds of its rural population,

almost 500 million people,

have to use water

that's been contaminated by human or industrial waste,

so gastrointestinal cancer

is the number-one killer here in the countryside.

Has been both a health crisis and an environmental crisis

due to a shortage

of the one resource that no one can live without,

and that's clean water.

[Bunn]: There are rivers there

where the chemical oxygen demand

takes out all of the oxygen,

so, you know, these are river systems

that have no dissolved oxygen.

There are levels of metal contamination

and other industrial effluent

that make it impossible for any living creature,

so there are certainly places

where all of the sort of natural features are gone,

and the water is virtually useless for all applications.

Get this bad?

It's a question environmental campaigners in China

have asked their government for many years.

We need to make them strengthen the enforcement.

We need to have our court open

to public environmental lawsuits,

but those are deep-rooted issues

which can not be overcome,

you know, easily,

so we decided the public must participate.

We need to have extensive public participation

to help address this issue.

[Narrator]: Environmental activists have spent years

investigating the root causes for China's river pollution,

but being in a Communist state, they've had to tread lightly.

[Tianjie]: When we do investigations,

we tend to be more careful

because our aim is to get the problem exposed,

but if you alert these polluters,

or make them aware that you are investigating them,

they might take some action to stop you.

[Narrator]: Tianjie Ma

And teams of toxic campaigners throughout China have been at the forefront of a long investigation

into the sources of chemical substances

finding their way into China's rivers.

They've discovered the textile industry

is a major contributor to China's river contamination.

[Tianjie]: You can find a lot of carcinogens in it.

A lot of the carcinogens are related to dye,

because the industry uses a lot of dyes,

and also you find chemicals

that may disrupt the hormone system.

We found chemicals that are really nasty

that can change the sex of a fish, for example,

and these kinds of chemicals are still heavily used in China,

even if some of them

have already been banned in Europe or in North America.

We also find chemicals that are persistent,

which means when they get released into the environment,

they don't break down,

and they travel around the world,

so one toxic chemical

being released by a Chinese textile factory

may travel half of the globe

and end up in the Canadian Arctic,

where you can find it in the body of a polar bear,

so these are the really nasty toxic chemicals

that we are talking about.

[Ma]: The textile industry

Is one of the major sources of water pollution in China.

Every year it discharges

about 2.5 billion tons of wastewater,

and much of that not properly treated.

I don't think the consumers,

when they enjoy all these products,

they would know about this,

so what we need to do

is to try to go underground with our partners,

through this underground research,

to really bring out the fact of the pollution

and all its impact.

[Narrator]: Investigations proved that toxic chemicals

were being dumped into China's rivers,

especially by the textile companies.

The next step was to connect the dots

and identify the companies responsible for the pollution.

[Tianjie]: We started to ask this question,

"Who is doing business?

Where do these products go?

Where do people buy these products?"

So we started this chain of custody study

where we are trying to track where those products go.

We got links

that some of those products are actually sold to the world's biggest brand names,

like Nike, Adidas, Puma,

or fashion brands like Zara, H&M.

We started to have this picture

that when China is providing the whole world

with all that clothing,

at the same time we are suffering

all the pollution that is left behind,

so we found this really astonishing fact,

so we started to present all our findings

to the whole world.

We want to make people aware

that every single piece of clothing that you buy

comes with a cost.

[Narrator]: Greenpeace took an aggressive stance

Against fashion,

staging world-wide protests

and releasing reports

documenting the pollution problem.

They set up a campaign

challenging some of the biggest brands in fashion

to detox their products,

while hoping that consumers would get the message

that some fashion comes with a large environmental price tag.

The reason Greenpeace started a detox campaign

was we found that our rivers across the world

were being deeply impacted

by the dumping of poisonous toxic material in our rivers,

done with absolutely no regulation, no oversight,

and sadly, many of the products that were being produced

Through this dirty polluting way of producing fashion

was actually the direct contributor

to massive amounts of river contamination.

[Orsola de Castro]: There is a joke in China.

They say that you can predict the "it" colour for the season by looking at the colour of the river,

you know, sort of if they've dyed more yellow,

then that's what the river will look like.

There is really no way out of it,

and it is depressing talking about it.

It does make you feel very powerless

to a certain extent.

It's particularly scandalous

how long it's been allowed to go on

and how little has been done

to highlight this problem for future generations,

who are ultimately the ones that will have to foot the bill

and really suffer the consequences.

That are very, very hidden and very secret.

I used to think "I wonder why."

I know why now, because the damage is so huge,

the damage that they have done is so huge,

but we will be demanding to know who makes our clothes,

where do they come from,

what are they made out of, increasingly, and the industry will have to accommodate those demands.

[Narrator]: Taken as a whole,

The textile industry is a huge, complex global entity, but if we focus on one iconic consumer product,

it offers a snapshot of how we all contribute

to the issue of industrial water pollution.

Investigators,

as well as some who work in the fashion industry,

have long known the dirty little secret

behind the manufacturing of blue jeans.

This iconic product

illustrates some of the most visible and gross pollution

caused by overseas production,

but it wasn't always this way.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, El Paso, Texas held the title

"blue jeans capital of the world,"

producing almost two million pairs of jeans per week.

Now, it's just a shell of its former self.

The once mighty Rio Grande, a great water resource,

ran directly through El Paso before it began to dry up,

but the real impetus

to El Paso losing the blue jeans manufacturing base was the signing of a free trade agreement

allowing clothing brands to look further afield

for lower-cost labour and production.

And the great question of this day

is how to ensure security for our people

at a time when change is the only constant.

I believe we have made a decision now

that will permit us

to create an economic order in the world

that will promote more growth, more equality,

better preservation of the environment,

and a greater possibility of world peace.

We are on the verge of a global economic expansion

that is sparked by the fact

that the United States, at this critical moment,

decided that we would compete, not retreat.

In a few moments,

I will sign the North AmericanFree Trade Act into law.

NAFTA will tear down trade barriers

between our three nations.

It will create the world's largest trade zone

and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone.

[Narrator]: Soon after NAFTA's signing,

manufacturers left for Mexico

and eventually offshore

to China, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

Industry also exported immense environmental problems

simply because

the environmental regulations in those countrieswere not nearly as strong

as what exists in the United States.

So where did all those jobs and jeans go?

They came here,

Xintang, the new jeans capital of the world.

[Angelo]: Textiles are a huge industry in China.

Last year the country exported more than $200 billion

dollars in apparel,

and Xintang

is the blue jean capital of the world.

They produce about 300 million pairs of jeans a year,

a third of the world's supply.

[Narrator]: As early as 30 years ago,

this city had a small manufacturing base

making blue jeans.

What started off as just a few "mom and pop" operations

has blossomed into becoming a major exporter of blue jeans

to the world market,

with a huge environmental impact.

[Tianjie]: I think some consumers just don't realize

what kind of environmental impact

or environmental footprint

one single piece of jean would carry.

When producing one piece of jean,

actually it uses up a lot of water

for washing and other processes,

and also it releases a lot of polluted water

into the environment.

[Narrator]: Making a pair of jeans

can be a water-intensive process.

Levi's, the iconic manufacturer of blue jeans,

did a study of how much water

went into the making one pair of their 501 jeans.

They discovered it took almost 920 gallons of water,

400 megajoules of energy,

and expelled 32 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

Levis said that this was the equivalent

to running a garden hose for 106 minutes,

driving 78 miles,

and powering a computer for 556 hours.

[Ma]: We found that this industry

Is having one of the lowest, if not the lowest,

rate of water recycling.

They just want to use the water once,

and then they just discharge that into the rivers,

and they've got so much concentrated

in some parts of China,

so with that concentration of pollution,

the impact to that local region is very serious.

[Narrator]: It's been estimated that in a single year,

One large fashion brand uses the equivalent of water

that is in 43,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The textile industry

is one of the largest consumers of water in the world,

using 3.2% of all water

available to the human race every year.

[Angelo]: Textiles, environmentally,

can be a dirty business,

and the fabric dyes used for jeans

contain hazardous materials,

things like mercury, cadmium, and lead,

and the local industry here has long been accused

of releasing its wastewater directly into the Pearl River,

so while China has reaped huge economic benefits

from the textile industry,

that same industry has been a major contributor

to its water pollution problem.

We don't own the factories anymore.

If you own your factory,

you will have rules and regulation,

but also an instinct

to be extremely effective in your production,

and that includes managing your water

and managing your waste.

If you don't own your factory,

let alone know the majority

of where your clothes are being made,

you have absolutely no interest,

and a great facility to go to bed at night

thinking "That's not my problem."

[Narrator]: Orsola de Castro,

A leader in sustainable fashion,

has created a clothing line

made entirely from discarded materials.

She's concerned that her industry

is one of the world's biggest polluters,

with a business model based on high volume/low cost clothing,

what many critics call "fast fashion."

[de Castro]: The reason why we let fashion pollute so much

and we let it go this far

is profit,

rich fat men on boards

wanting to make more and more money.

I don't think that we can any longer sit by

while people are suffering,

and the planet is suffering,

for us to have economic gain.

If everybody on this planet

lived the way North America does,

we'd need, like, eight planets.

[Eric Dickstein]: You know, it's funny

Because these companies can pretend like they don't know what is going on,

but they absolutely do know what's going on.

They don't want to acknowledge it

because it means that they are willing participants

of destroying the environment.

You are completely responsible as a company

for how you're making your product.

Are they acting that way? Not necessarily.

For the most part, not at all.

Denim, the way that we look at it now,

the way that we have it now,

will be seen as fashion's greatest stupidity.

Distressed denim, insanity made visible.

It has become a huge hazard to the environment,

For the sake of clothing,

especially the type of clothing that we are wearing these days,

is criminal.

Maybe it's because the demand of the world

has gone crazy for this look

and they want stuff to be distressed

and stripes on it, and...

o vintage jean ever looked like that,

so there is a difference between the early processing,

which is really just to get it looked a little bit old,

a little bit worn here and here, fine.

Not even whiskers.

There weren't whiskers and all that stuff, you know? That's... come on, guys.

The chemicals used in order to create the looks,

Whether they are called the whiskers,

you know, the tear,

are beyond unbelievable and continuous.

There are the ones that make it look distressed through paint

or distressed through, you know, sandpaper, whatever.

One of the funniest scenes I saw in one of these denim factories

was this huge warehouse full of people

just literally sandpapering day in, day out.

Sandpapering denim

at 98% humidity while they worked,

because that's what you need to preserve the right chemicals,

which is an incredibly unpleasant way of working.

Breathing all this acid,

and that destroys your lungs.

Okay? People die.

Do we want now, just because we have a distressed jean,

you have, you wear distressed jeans,

and you kill somebody.

[Narrator]: Francois Girbaud is credited

As the man who invented stone-washed jeans.

Early on, he also began using chemicals

to get the distressed look in denim products.

We make a mistake at the beginning.

We were responsible.

When we start, first,

we don't realize how what we did was wrong,

because we did, we make a mistake.

We make a mistake because...

If you talk to me, okay, if we were talking,

I don't know, before 1989,

I tried to find everything more, more, more corrosive.

We make all these treatments and washing,

all the processes of washing we invent

during from '72 to '89, continuous invention,

Using everything, acid, etc., etc.,

but I realized the importance of our work,

what we did, what was the reaction,

because pollution of rivers, everything, we invented that.

[Enrique Silla]: The fathers of our industry,

people like Francois Girbaud, like Adriano Goldschmied,

they invented stone wash, they invented bleaching,

they invented potassium permanganate,

and at that time,

they were just trying to find a beautiful product

and a great product.

They didn't realize that these inventions, one day,

Will damage the ecology, the planet, and the rivers.

[Girbaud]: We have to slow down.

We have to slow down the chemicals.

If everybody, the consumer knows,

this beautiful white here is made by acid,

and this acid is something destroying the planet,

we are committing a suicide for the planet,

we are, surely, surely, we know, we go, we go...

What do we talk about new generations?

What we talk about that? It's no future.

If we continue like this, it's done. It's done.

Is that at the end of the '80s or starting of the '90s,

we have a tremendous delocalization of the production

from the U.S. to China,

from Italy, Spain, South Europe,

that were a strong production place,

to India, etc.,

so immediately,

all the big plants start to produce

without water treatment plants,

throwing all their dirty water to the rivers

and destroying the planet,

and at the same time,

the consumption increased tremendously.

In America, people buy four jeans every year,

in Europe, 1.5 jeans every year,

so consumption tremendously increased.

[Narrator]: In the past 20 years,

China has effectively doubled

the amount of textiles it produces.

At first glance, this represents good news for the consumers,

who benefit from cheaper clothing

and quicker turnaround in styles,

but as the prices plummeted in the fashion industry,

it was China's waterways and the people who rely on them

who were paying the price

of an increasing amount of untreated wastewater

being dumped into these rivers.

The toxic effects of industrialization

appear irreversible,

but history has proven that a biologically dead river

can be reversed.

40 years ago, this river was in real trouble.

There were no signs of life,

primarily because of the pollution in the river.

[Narrator]: Globally, we can learn

from the massive conservation efforts

and strict legislation implemented in London

against the dumping of toxins

that allows rivers like the Thames to regenerate.

[Angelo]: There are lots of signs of life here now.

There's 125 species of fish back in the river.

That certainly is a cause for hope.

[Narrator]: Milan,

one of the world's most important fashion capitals

along with London, New York, and Paris,

but we haven't come here to shop retail.

Rather, we've made the journey

to a small town outside of Milan

where a textile company has adopted a new technology

in order to change the way that denim is produced.

Forty years ago, the situation was completely different,

o rules for the water,

so you didn't care about the water pollution,

about the chemicals.

So, the middle of the '70s to the middle of the '80swas, I think, a real mess in Italy for everybody.

We put money in the water treatment,

we put money to pay attention in what we are doing,

and only when you put money you can understand

that you are using chemicals that you don't need.

[Narrator]: Luigi Caccia,

the second-generation owner of Italdenim,

manages one of the leading companies in Europe

for the production of denim.

His company was one of the first

to embrace Greenpeace's detox campaign.

Our first point is to make business,

but at the end,

we can understand only by going deeper,

to understand how many dangerous things we are making

just to make a pair of denim.

[Narrator]: Luigi says it's hard

for his company to compete with offshore denim companies, many who don't put any money into pollution controls.

[Caccia]: The worst are using the chemicals in excess.

The price is lower, the quality is pretty good,

so how can I compete with this?

This is the big difference

between us and the rest of the world,

the way we make it.

[Narrator]: In many ways,

Italdenim follows the pattern of many other companies in the production of denim,

but there is one major step that Italdenim implements

in the treatment of their cotton

that eliminates toxic chemicals and reduces water usage

by up to 80%.

The production of denim begins

with the arrival of cotton to the processing facility,

where the raw product is broken down

into thin strands that wrap from machine to machine

to build up a strong yarn.

Once the yarn is spun, the roll is ready for dyeing.

This is where Italdenim has taken a huge turn

and changed the processing of denim.

Italdenim turned to the ocean

for a solution to standard chemical processing.

They learned that by using the exoskeleton of shellfish

crushed into a fine powder called "Chitosan,"

they could enhance the dyeability of denim.

The Chitosan is very simple.

It's the shellfish of the crab or the shrimp

that is thrown away from the food industry.

It is recovered, transformed into Chitosan,

and it goes into the circular economy,

because we reutilize something

that someone else has thrown away.

[Narrator]: Chitosan is a natural

and incredibly strong fixing agent

that reduces the amount of chemicals used

to make your blue jeans blue.

[Caccia]: This is the Chitosano.

It is a completely 100%

atoxic and biocompatible product.

We use, mixing with simply water,

so we put in the water here, like this,

and we get, at the end, this kind of pasta.

There is no danger in touching.

This cream goes to the machine,

and we apply it directly on the yarn.

So here is where we apply the Chitosano.

We don't need anymore any fixing agent,

because the Chitosano, with the light,

fixes like a shell around the yarn,

and protects the yarn and the colour too.

You don't need to put other chemicals like PVA,

this micro plastic that goes into the water,

that goes into the river,

and it goes into the sea,

and it goes into the fish for sure.

It's impossible to stop.

We want to reach the 360 degrees using of Chitosano,

and we could eliminate a huge quantity of chemicals.

This is one step

that is a revolutionary step into the textile denim industry, and I think it is one of the ways

to approach the future of this job.

[Narrator]: This is breakthrough science

in the textile industry,

and if adopted by large brands,

the positive impact on the environment

can't be overstated.

The first point is to make something

that helps you to save money.

If you save chemicals,

first of all, you save money, then you save nature, but first of all, you save money.

[Narrator]: Through cutting back on water usage

and introducing their water-recycling process,

Italdenim has reduced

their industrial waste footprint.

The plant also recaptures steam and produces its own power.

There has been an enormous investment

in building this infrastructure

to produce an environmentally friendly fabric.

The cost to the brands for this fabric

is only pennies more

than fabric produced in a third-world country.

[Caccia]: These are all small things

That a small company like us has made.

If a big company makes it,

it's 10, 12, 100 times more the effect.

Everybody need to push these guys. We need to tell to the brands

that there is the possibility to make it different.

[Narrator]: In this city

in the southeast corner of Spain,

in an industrial park,

sits a small company that is on the cutting edge

of eco-friendly blue jean processing.

Using two common elements, light and air,

they've come up with ingenious methods

that have the ability

to replace traditional, polluting methods

of distressing jeans.

We completely changed the way a jean is produced.

If you look into jeans finishing,

you have two areas:

one area we call "wet processing,"

that includes a tremendous amount of water,

and the other area we call "dry processing."

Dry processing includes

a tremendous amount of work, of labour. So there are three technologies.

One is sandblasting,

that today is forbidden around the world.

The second one is potassium permanganate spraying,

which is about spraying a chemical product

that is very dangerous if you breathe,

so it's just spraying a product just to create a local abrasion,

and the third one is what we call manual scraping,

which is just scraping manually the jeans physically,

one by one, just to create some areas that look worn.

For just finishing a pair of jeans, you know,

which means a lot of water just for the finishing.

Why don't we just, in terms of finishing,

lower that impact

so you, as a consumer, you have the right

to ask the brand that you are wearing

where that jean came from,

and how it's being manufactured or finished.

[Narrator]: Jeanologia is using lasers

as one tool to distress the jeans.

By using light, they are able to eliminate

the indigo blue colour in raw denim.

It sounds easy, and it is,

but you still have to be creative

in order to replicate

the worn look that consumers are seeking.

[Silla]: Basically, what lasers is doing

is using the light to eliminate,

or physically sublimate, the indigo from jeans,

and to transfer any image that we create in a computer

So we can make digital pictures

of authentic, old, true, worn jeans,

and we can take the details from there,

we can play with these images, pictures in a computer,

And then we can transfer this

and engrave this through the energy of the light

in a jean in seconds.

[Narrator]: Jeanologia is also taking water out of the equation

by loading jeans

into what looks like a commercial washing machine. To give jeans the washed-out, worn look,

they're using an element

that we take for granted every moment in our lives: air.

[Penades]: The G2 gets the air from the room,

And then gets the oxygen out of the air,

and it converts oxygen, O2, into ozone, O3,

And it does the job that a normal stone-wash process

would do for hours and hours of energy

and loads and loads of water,

and many other products also that are harmful for nature,

Efficient, and waterless technology.

[Silla]: The good thing,

and that's the beauty of this technology,

is that we eliminate water without increasing the cost,

If you have two jeans,

one is damaging the planet, the other one not,

both looks equal and the price is the same,

I mean, no one would choose the wrong one.

I mean, there is no excuse.

[Narrator]: To help sell the laser and ozone technologies

to brands who age denim with chemicals,

the company has enlisted

the help of one of the godfathers of denim design,

a man with a newfound mission

who now wants to help clean up the mess he helped to create.

Because when you do a garment in the ozone,

of course you can't just do one garment,

you have to do 11 pounds wet or dry.

Absolutely, but what is interesting

is completely we are not using chemicals.

Just inside...

All there is is electricity, an air line, and that's it.

That's it. Air.

[Narrator]: Francois started working

with this denim facility,

a place where new technologies

are bumping into the old ways of distressing jeans.

Francois was an innovator with passion and sensitivity,

and I think that's what's needed.

It's the passion and sensitivity that drive design, and design, in a way, shows you care.

I did create the first stretch jean,

In my humble opinion, in my not such humble opinion.

The first ones were just garment washed.

There was no bleaching or anything like that.

It wasn't necessary.

It took 40 years,

40 years before we started to understand

that what we did was wrong.

[Golding]: We are all a bit guilty of all that,

Francois, Adriano, or any of us,

but I think it's the degree to which it's gone, you know?

I'm sure there's many other examples in life

where somebody starts something quite naively.

[Narrator]: A young denim designer,

Eric Dickstein,

has had to learn the business by trial and error

while keeping to his core belief

in making an ethical jean product.

Denim is one of the biggest commodities in the world.

If you travel to China,

where most of the world manufactures

for the mass consumers,

well, you end up with having rivers

that are turning blue.

They're like, illuminating

because of the chemicals that are in the water.

It's hard to find out the truth sometimes.

You know, what I learned is that people close their eyes.

That's really what I learned.

I learned that no one really wants to talkabout the little monster in the closet,

so you don't learn the details,

because people don't want to talk about them,

because at the end of the day, it's not a selling point.

Oftentimes you learn by someone doing it the right way,

ot the wrong way,

because the guy who's doing it the right way

will tell you all the things

that are going wrong in the industry.

It's definitely people that are trying to make change

that will often tell you what is actually going on.

We can control the amount of ozone that's generated,

how long we can expose the jean to the ozone,

and really control the fading,

and still get that beautiful kind of contrast

and highs and lows

without using any toxic chemicals,

and without using any pumice stone,

and that's really, I think,

one of the more detrimental parts to denim laundry. [Narrator]: Lukus Eichmann and Eric Dickstein

are a new breed

of jean designers and boutique manufacturerswho are committed to transparency

and producing ethical jeans.

Their output is a microdot in the global production

that companies like Levi's, Gap, Old Navy and other large brands

have in the world marketplace.

What's important is that they're on the cusp

of a growing movement

of many small ethical labels around the world

who are concerned with the massive pollution

being created in the current jeans landscape.

So the option was, you know,

go with that kind of old-school mentality and the existing infrastructure that's out there

where they're using toxic chemicals

and potassium permanganate and pumice stone,

which has a huge carbon footprint

to mine and haul,

and creates a huge amount of waste afterward,

or kind of come up with something new,

invest money in the way that we make the jean,

and completely control every element

of how the jean is processed in the wash,

and make a really beautiful product,

and prove to the whole industry it can happen.

When you're doing something new,

there's fewer clients to deal with,

so basically you're building a brand;

Wiser Wash, Eco PRK, that's a brand,

and their brand is healthy, lifestyle,

environment, positive,

which are awesome things,

but there is not enough people

jumping on that bandwagon at this point,

but as soon as the big boys,

the people that probably control most of the market,

say "Yeah, we got to jump on that movement,"

there will be no difference in price.

I don't think it necessarily has to cost more,

and actually we see a return on investment

in a larger setting, you know,

in a pretty short period of time,

because you are subtracting the cost of those chemicals.

You're using less water,

and so, at the end of the day,

there is going to be savings for the manufacturer.

The challenge that we see and hear

directly from other manufacturers

is really just overhauling their whole infrastructure,

'cause so far

they've just kind of been putting bandaids on, or adding things because it exists already,

so it is expensive for an existing player

to refurb their whole factory,

and that's why I think a lot of the change

is coming from brand-owned factories,

or people who have a concern

on the front end of the business.

[Narrator]: In our conversations with people

Like Ma Jun, Orsola de Castro, and Francois Girbaud,

they all voiced the same refrain,

that big brands and big retailers in the west

have been able to outsource their production,

and therefore,

they think they've outsourced the responsibility. In the past 55 years,

the U.S. has outsourced their clothing production

to developing countries,

translating to low prices and increased consumption.

The statistics are insane,

something like 80 billion garments of clothes

are being delivered out of factories,

and those are the ones that make it out,

so we don't think about all of the ones

for those 80 billion amount of garments

that come out of factories,

probably an equal amount has been made in factories,

but it's wrong, and that's discarded,

so, you know, it's landfill, they're discarded into water,

I mean, you know, it just goes on and on and on.

[Narrator]: In her book "Overdressed,"

writer Elizabeth Cline wrote,

"As any economist will tell you,

cheaper prices stimulate consumption,

and the current low rate of fashion

has spurred a shopping free-for-all,

where in the United States

consumers are buying and hoarding

roughly 20 billion garments per year."

The consumer did not wake up one morning saying,

"Actually, I am fed up of spending.

I want to buy five pairs of jeans

for a fraction of the price."

We were literally introduced to this concept

by the fashion industry

as a new business model,

which is entirely to do with increasing profits.

[Narrator]: We're depleting our natural resources.

We've permanently altered our climate.

In China, where most of our clothes are produced

and where a burgeoning population

is gaining a taste for fashion,

we are creating another environmental crisis

for the planet.

But we can't blame one country.

We have to look globally

and realize that by buying so much clothing

and treating it as disposable,

we are putting a huge weight on the environment,

and it is simply unsustainable.

When the name of the game is fast and cheap,

Is it any wonder that the costs of protecting the environment

are often nowhere to be found

in the operating budgets of companies

who supply our insatiable appetite for fast fashion?

Critics of this trend agree that something must be done.

The change will happen.

How quickly is determined by the consumer.

Just choosing to buy a responsible product

versus a conventional product,

you are going to make change.

But I think it's our job as a brand,

and the community of designers and brands that exist,

to help educate consumers.

I don't think that any consumers, you know,

if they know about what is going on in our rivers

and, I mean, all this impact on the local communities,

sometimes they have very serious health impacts,

I don't think they're going to continue to be silent.

I think they will, you know,

I hope that they can use their buying power

to try to influence...

influence the factories and also especially the brands,

the brands, and through them to try to push them,

pressure them, to green their supply chain.

I think that's doable.

The only thing we would say,

just to get the historical record right, we have never really gone after a company

before asking them politely

through reports, through meetings, to change.

In those meetings, generally, the CEOs would say, you know,

"Of course we agree with what Greenpeace is saying,

we're working on it,

here's a thick plan

of our environmental sustainability approach," and so on and so forth.

But then what we find

is once they get back into their day-to-day job, they slip back into a "business as usual" approach.

There is no urgency.

If anything, the best they are doing

are baby steps in the right direction,

and we want them not to just do symbolic greenwashing things,

We want them actually to make the changes

that ultimately is going to be good for the environment,

and good for the long-term sustainability

of their businesses.

In 2025, the need of the water for human will be double, but every day we are killing the water

for stupid stuff like a pair of blue jeans.

The future of the fashion and textile industry

over the next immediate few years,

will be looking at transparency, traceability,

So, it all starts with a "t," easy to remember, you know,

let's do something about it pretty quickly.

I think all corporations

Have to be accountable for their environmental practices, and no one, no one has a right to damage or destroy a river, so I do think more within the textile sector

have to commit, truly commit,

to a fashion industry without pollution.

I also think in the end the consumer has a lot of power,

and if more and more of us sought out clothing

that was made in an environmentally friendly manner,

that would go a long way to improve things as well.

[♪♪♪]