15 Of The World's Most Toxic Places | Business Insider Marathon

0:00 they called it graffiti Highway and it used to lead to a ghost town it all started in 1962 when an accidental fire at the town's landfill ignited an underground coal seam today toxic steam wafts up through the ground in some places the vents are so hot you can cook eggs as a producer for Business Insider I've worked on dozens of stories like this about the messes that people create that are nearly impossible to clean up what always surprises me is that even in the most polluted places we meet remarkable people doing whatever they can just to make it through another day here are the stories of how people get by in 15 of the world's most toxic

0:46 places every round in this rifle could save a bird's life the splash of the bullet scares migrating species off this mile long toxic l Lake in Montana if Birds land there for more than a few hours the acidic water Cooks them from the inside out it's Mark Mariano's mission to make sure that doesn't happen yeah Mark Mariano water foul protection specialist we invented that title but it it fits he uses a multi-million dollar arsenal of high-tech tools to keep birds

1:31 off of what used to be a copper mine in but Montana this is the one everybody likes to see though do you get to fly the Drone that's what they no no what's now a toxic bird bath started out as an open pit mine 65 years ago but in 1982 the company that owned the mine shut down the water pumps groundwater started to seep in creating sulfuric acid that LE Metals out of the rock people have been shoing birds off the Berkeley pit ever since and some of the methods they've developed here could help protect the estimated hundreds of millions of birds killed by industrial activity every

2:20 year snow geese avets and grebs are just a few of the species that stop in be on their Journey North in Spring and South in fall and Mark loves them all you're Widing te I mean I dream sleep eat and poop you know Ducks we obviously went over the top with the wildlife Decor my mom bought me this one and I told her it was stupid and now I love it but the sounds that repel birds are more unnatural so we're going to move it over

3:05 there it goes always when you're trying to talk the first line of defense is four so-called Whalers they randomly play a series of alarms to annoy the birds you can hear these things on a you know nice warm summer night all across be and propane cannons hooked up to timers fire all day they mimic gunfire which a lot of the um birds are scared of for obvious reasons on special occasions the birds might get their own private fireworks display this is a kind of a last resort or we know you know something big would be coming we've used them twice one of Mark's favorite tools is meant for spotting the birds before they get wet it's a $5,000 sorosi scope

3:50 but after nearly 4 years on the job he can usually spot them with a naked eye can you see them no I'm going to keep laying on them cuz if we can get keep them from Landing that's always the best HQ is this small Hut along the same Ridge where the mine's dispatcher used to direct trucks they call it the bird Shack we've discussed renaming it something more professional sounding than bird cheack but it's become such kind of a colloquial term that we kept it during peak season someone like Mark comes up here every hour to do what they call hazing that's the technical term for annoying birds that land on the pit so

4:36 they fly away we got a group coming in one two three four five it looks like more shs so there's 33 2 3 43 when they first started scaring off Birds 30 years ago their only tools were a rifle and a clipboard they didn't even have heat during the long Montana Winters for the the most part it worked even if the miners records looked like a real life game of duck duck goose that changed in 2016 snow Gees migrate through Montana every year but that November an estimated 60,000 of them landed on the

5:22 pit essentially the entire snow goose population of our Flyway came overnight hidden nasty storm and ended up using the worst rest stop that they possibly could this could be myth now you know um but they shot the gun so many times the barrel like essentially curved cuz it got too hot about 3,000 birds died in a matter of days according to the US fish and wildlife service those guys choke up when they you know you a Burly Miner talking about coming out here and seeing you know thousands of snow geese on there after that the company's working to clean up the pit brought in experts to devise a

6:08 more scientific approach the researchers discovered that the pit attracts over 50 bird species not just ducks and geese the companies invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into fancy high-tech tools but many didn't work it turns out that each kind of bird responds differently with each of the Technologies as well as the simple stuff a combo of them can help sometimes and then usually one will pick up where the other leaves off the aerial drone is most effective when Birds land on ice or the shore where there's a risk a bullet could Ricochet Mark's high-powered laser works well on American Cs and other species that like to migrate at

6:54 night in 2016 they custom built drones just for the pit early prototypes combined 3D printed Parts with boogie boards and kid-sized kayaks so they're at your 10:00 today technicians use a remote control to operate what they call the water dog here's the group oh they probably went out of your view to the left a little bit now sometimes the boat gets the birds to lift off then a rifle shot gets them to fly away this this new and improved Suite of tools has a near perfect record of keeping birds off this deadly human-made mess successful programs like the one at

7:40 the pit are more important than ever nearly a third of North America's bird population has disappeared since 1970 mining is to blame for destroying habitat but some cleanup efforts have worked just not always in the way people expect for a prime example of that you need to travel about 20 M Downstream every year hundreds of thousands of birds stop here the Warm Springs Wildlife Management Area it's where researchers Stella kosha and Gary Swan come to count Birds oh we've got some American abets these scientists helped design the pits upgraded Protection Program the

8:25 reports that we do here on Mondays and Wednesdays are posted in the bird Shack so these uh miners have a good predictive instrument of what might be in the pit here's a cinnamon teal that uh you probably haven't seen one of those yet this year during peak season Gary's grandson also helps with the count we'll usually peek at like 50,000 60,000 birds in the valley and those are long days those are like 10hour days the team comes to Warm Springs because it's a biodiverse Haven that has hosted more than half of Montana's bird species but just like the Berkeley pit it was created by humans this is a constructed area that now um has then

9:11 turned into a preserve for the wildlife in 1908 a flood washed mining waste from but into local waterways it killed fish and made the water unsafe for humans after that catastrophe these ponds were built so that hard Metals could seep out of the water before they run Downstream giant Hoppers neutralize the water with lime that keeps things clean and safe enough for wildlife so the event happened in a single month in 1908 and here we are still getting it cleaned up feels wonderful because we can

9:58 correct the problems of the best experts caution that it's impossible to erase over a 100 Years of mining pollution but with people like Gary Stella and Mark on the job the future for Montana's Birds might be looking up but not if you're a wild turkey I am by no means a seasoned turkey hunter so this is my very first but we saved everything Mark takes pride in not letting anything go to waste made it real traditional like a chicken noodle soup it's even gluten-free if you can believe that has anyone ever pointed out to you the irony of the fact that your entire job is to keep wild birds safe and you go hunting I'm a big

10:43 waterfall Hunter as well and what that has taught me about protecting the waterfall at the pit is just Priceless I wake up without an alarm every morning and I'm you know happy to ghost you know literally rescue birds and most days you walk home you know with your head held high while more people than ever before have access to digital devices it comes at a cost ew is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world with around 62 million tons produced in 2022 alone nowhere is this more apparent than in neighborhoods like SE Lampur in Delhi India where around 50,000 people scavenge through old electronics each day cutting their hands and wearing away

11:29 their fingerprints in the process India has become the world's biggest Dumping Ground for electronic waved and much of it is processed and recycled manually Often by underage children e-waist is full of toxic chemicals like lead ORS and Mercury but there are also plenty of valuable materials like copper platinum and even gold so why does so much of it end up in landfills and why is recycling it such a

12:15 risky [Applause] business 14-year-old Gulzar starts his morning sing breakfast at his father's food cart and after school he heads to this dump to sort through [Music] e-w most of India's electronic waste ends up in Northeast delhi's cumur neighborhood nearly 50,000 people Di through the trash here every day many of

13:01 them are teenagers all searching for old cell phones computers and video game controllers gulzar's hands are so damaged from years of prying them apart that his fingerprints have worn [Music] away few have gloves or other safety equipment the health risks are one of the reasons why Gulzar hasn't told his mother he still works here most of his friends also scavenge

13:47 for a living like alen who stopped going to school because his father got tuberculosis 3 years [Applause] ago that's why his family sent him to work even though he was just [Applause] 16 now Alim breaks down up to 150 of these phones every day old electronics have high levels of mercury cadmium and Lead which can harm the kidneys but they also hold precious

14:34 metals usually Alim can collect up to 11 lb of mix crap which he sells for $6 a day to a middleman at gafar Market it's famous for cheap electronics and many e-w devices are refurbished and sold [Music] here processing E-Waste is complicated and expensive even in facilities that have more structure in modern machinery they're not designed to be recycled many different chemical compounds all smashed together when devices got smaller and smaller removing whole components became less and less possible we visited one of the largest recyclers in the US back in

15:20 2021 at the time Sim's lifecycle Services was processing up to 6 million pound of electronics a month most most of these old devices come from private companies like HP that ship it here a chunk of the work is done by hand memory units processors screens keyboards and motherboards can all be reused workers clean them check if they're working and send them back into inventory to be sold again sometimes when you can't sell a whole laptop we can remove parts from it and either rebuild a laptop to sell or sell Parts big hard drives spooked from computers or servers are another Money Maker any store data has to be wiped

16:08 before a drive can be resold we have a lot of banks and insurance companies as our clients so you can well imagine that those folks want their data erased properly what couldn't be refurbished used to be sent to recycling workers would remove hazardous materials like batteries before sending the device to a shredder Metals circuit boards and plastic were separated in that process and resold but since we filmed with them recycling has become their last resort only to prevent materials from going to landfills they're more focused on refurbishing devices to extend their lifespan China the US and India are the

16:55 biggest generators of e-w but only 177% of electronics discarded globally were recycled in 2019 much of it is illegally shipped to developing countries where it's sorted by informal workers but they don't have the knowledge or the tools to safely handle it so a lot of it ends up in landfills sustainability expert Pani Verma says that's contaminating the environment air water soil all three of them are getting badly

17:43 affected sometimes they burn the waste that they cannot resell this is going into the nostrils it's leading to stunted growth in children it's leading to miscarriages in women it's leading to organ damage it's leading to bone density loss and most electronics are coded in flame retardants that release poisonous gases when burned it's also affecting the human body skin diseases different types of cancers they are happening because of the contaminations the waste has also polluted water sources like the nearby yamna River they acid wash the motherboards to take out the metals the pressure metals

18:30 and then they just drain it into any kind of a water body with global E-Waste expected to increase 38% by the end of the decade India implemented new rules to regulate recycling facilities but they don't impact informal workers nor do they address child labor in the industry children as young as 14 are allowed to work in India but not in hazardous conditions like these it kind of has become a work of generations you know one generation to next to next to next there has to be a talks of these young children working to go

19:17 study but going to school is not an option for alen his mother gulan Bano sells vegetables to get by [Music] friend Gulzar still goes to [Music] school and he has dreams of a better life a 100-year-old Coal Mine in coring Ohio

20:02 is still polluting the surrounding area with iron oxide but it turns out that this toxic sludge is actually a valuable asset artists Harvest this orange colored sludge and turn it into paintings that help raise awareness about the Region's toxic Legacy after a coal mine shuts down the pollution doesn't stop toxic waste flows for decades contaminating rivers and killing Aquatic Life and it's nearly impossible to contain ype for a long time most of these dreams were just written off now a team has developed a method to harvest the muck and turn it into

20:51 paint but can it really clean up a century of worldwide waste it's harvest day at Pine Run a Creek in Ohio yeah keep going moving now yeah see the flo Michelle Shively mckyer and John SRA have been making pigment out of this pollution for over a decade this stuff is just really good yeah it's our favorite it is our favorite their team built a system of pipes that collect smelly goo called acid mine drainage or AMD for short it's highly acidic water leaking from an old coal mine that closed over a

21:38 100 years ago when you leave a mine and you just walk away from it what happens is it fills up instantly with water there really is no way to seal the mines completely the water that still leaks from mines today creates iron oxide which can be lethal to Aquatic Life that pipe is full full of iron sludge and it's going to come out of there really fast but it also happens to be an essential ingredient to make [Music] paint bucket need bucket it's a low Tech system right now that's what this team is harvesting today it's gold Matt it's gold the team filters buckets of iron

22:24 oxide using these troughs smooth it out and put some coolup on there and it's like pumpkin pie in a bin I'd eat it today's Haul is over 200 lb of iron oxide it's a bit more than this m sight pumps out in a single day wow then they move it to their research facility where Engineers wash the pigment to remove impurities that affect the final color basically we're just diluting out all the dissolve solids this is Guy reefer he's an engineer who partnered with Michelle and John to start true pigments it still kind of shocks me that Sunday Creek is this Orange Mass and it goes right

23:12 through several communities and it's been doing it for 20 years and aside from us nobody's really doing anything about it the team dries the pigment before shipping it off to a giant kilm they changed the color by controlling the temperature then they set the pigment to Portland Oregon where Gamblin artists colors uses it to make paint we wanted to be the first to make color with it we were just kind of all in there's three colors that are all made from pigment that has been painstakingly reclaimed by John and team this one is called iron Violet this worker mixes the pigment zinc and flax oil and a mill uses heat and pressure to combine the pigment and oil

24:02 and so with a little bit of pressure we draw it down then workers test for thickness texture and color finally they bottle it up Gamblin markets the paint as a reclaimed Earth colors John teaches art and uses the paints in his own studio if I want something deep and red and earthy you're not going to get anything better than an iron [Music] oxide he says his art helps to start conversations about protecting the environment the circle gives them

24:49 permission to decide for themselves instantly whether that is a universe a planet a stream or microbes and the new colors are taking off painters across the country have shared what they've created using the hashtag reclaimed color for now true pigments can't Harvest enough iron oxide to clean up an entire stream it has such a satisfying plop but the company plans to scale up by 2024 true pigments plans to open a larger facility it will harvest iron oxide and clean the water at one of Ohio's most polluted acid mine sites that would mean the company could Harvest raw material that could be used

25:34 in all kinds of products not just paints construction materials concrete bricks it's used for a lot of Industrial Coatings agricultural fertilizer Cosmetics we really had to find something useful to make out of this really you know detrimental pollution MH and Michelle says her team's method of retrieving iron oxide is more sustainable than mining it unfortunately they're dealing with a nearly unlimited resource there are nearly 10,000 square miles of abandoned coal mines across the United States iron oxide didn't do anything wrong iron oxide is not to blame here if you treat it right like we're doing it is a valuable asset it is beautiful these mines will continue

26:20 producing AMD for hundreds of years but Michelle is confident that turning pollution into art can make a difference there are an estimated half a million abandoned coal mines in the United States like this one in Ashford West Virginia while there is the more obvious risk of physical injury at the sites the mines are also releasing heavy metals and toxins into the water and air coal mining has ruined millions of acres of land across the us and it can pollute the surrounding areas for decades after the coal is gone now these these farmers are restoring coal mining land with lavender can this Farm be a model for lands destroyed by coal mining across

27:06 the country we went to Ashford West Virginia to find out when I signed up and I found out it was a lavender farm I was like a no way I never heard of a lavender farm I kind of like it it's my new home Aaron Morgan worked as a coal miner for a decade you I'm not the only ex Miner here there's a lot of EX coal miners here he never imagined he would be picking flowers on coal mining land it's strange to me that it's been farmed now cuz it it's really just a rock It's A Wasteland [Music] really Appalachian Botanical company or

27:53 ABCO is on a retired part of a larger coal mine let's go over me some of the guys my name's Frank I've had an assortment of jobs I like this one a bit I don't even work here I just come to be we do turn a good section of this mountain purple during the blooming season the business is part of a reclaiming process that rebuilds the landscape with new vegetation but it's complicated and costly imagine blasting the top off of a mountain and then trying to rebuild it piece by piece growing plants in the soil on mines is tough but luckily lavender loves poor soils and the sweet smelling herb can

28:39 actually reduce toxic heavy metals in the soil we make sure the soil tests come back so that there's no heavy metals no toxins of any kind the team harvest the lavender throughout the summer and early fall ABCO uses every part of the flour so nothing goes to waste I need like 35 lb of these buds cut off by tomorrow they spread the lavender on the floor to cut the buds and bundle the stems to sell for cooking we strip the bottom two leaves off and we'll dip that in water and rooting hormone they save small Leaf clippings and plant them to grow more lavender this is the 40 gallon pot that's a 26 Gall Matt Carter boils water

29:24 to steam distill about 40 lbs of lavender to make essential oil everybody knows that oil is lighter than water the oil floats to the top just strain the water off of it which we keep the water too they filter the oil three times before bottling it up they also use the flowers to make creams Honey Salt and hand sanitizer ready finally the leftover plant biomass is transformed into compost [Music] coal companies are legally required to restore the land they have mined after a company drills and blasts a deep pit it piles all the broken rock

30:11 and top soil back into it to reshape the landscape all that Earth gets compacted down to prevent erosion and runoff they plant some sort of vegetation and clean the water if need be an old mine can become any number of things like a grassland a home or in the case of Co a farm but does the land actually go back to what it was like before it's still fairly rare I think for um Reclamation to be done well Mike is reforesting a 2500 acre surface mine that has already been reclaimed but he says growing trees in the Rocky compacted soil is really challenging they have to rip the soil sometimes 3 or 4 feet to plant anything here when you stop the mining it it doesn't mean that the pollution stops

30:57 layers of of rock that have been deep in the Earth for Millennia are now exposed and so they become very active chemically uh when they're exposed to water pollutants leech off of those materials for you know decades if not hundreds of years hundreds of thousands of Acres of mining land across the US coal Fields haven't been reclaimed yet if the mine is stopped and Reclamation activity stops these mines just sort of sit uh often is you know Wasteland lands of bare soil and rock and there's a fear that as the coal industry continues to decline more land could go to waste ABCO hopes to expand its Farm onto this patch of partially reclaimed land on the mine but for now it's its idle

31:44 you can look out there and see all the nasty water just sitting out there and laying it's awful man we ain't even allowed out there and I'm assuming that's a reason we're not allowed out there what is most likely is that these mining companies will end up going bankrupt leaving this partially or unreclaimed land without following through on the Reclamation obligations unreclaimed mining land can lead to more flooding and landslides the coal companies stopped working which meant they also stopped fixing any of the problems that they had created companies only became responsible for cleaning up old mines in 1977 before that they simply abandoned them there are over over 6 million Acres of abandoned coal mines across the

32:31 country and they're releasing heavy metals and other toxins into the water and [Music] air out here come in and take some of these off businesses like ABCO are working to both restore the land and provide jobs here in Boon County as Co is on its way out the farm has doubled in size since it broke ground in 2019 that's a lot of flowers that's a lot of lavender that's a lot of work that's a lot of employment along with employing former coal miners ABCO also hires people in long-term drug recovery I like working here because they gave me the opportunity to show that my past is in a past they was still

33:17 willing to work with me and it was great that somebody gave me a chance to show that I can do this and so when we reclaim we don't just reclaim Land We reclaim land people communities everything reclaiming M land is one step toward a postco future the Biden Administration has committed to investing $260 million in Reclamation efforts for States and tribes and appco hopes to use some of that money to expand the business to more of West Virginia if that is funded it will enable us to set up a new Farm location in a neighboring County and set up a Regional Community Hub there but

34:04 the US government is still adding one more hurdle to cleaning up abandoned Min land the proposed infrastructure bill would reduce the tax on coal production that funds these Reclamation projects the Appalachian region they've sacrificed a lot for energy that has really built this country we as as a nation owe it to this region to fix some of these Ina dises Appalachia has a long way to go to clean up the mess created by generations of mining but these flowers give hope for a blossoming future a lot of times you get a ripple effect in the water right we don't make a ripple we make a wave the people who live in Delhi produce about 10,000 tons

34:49 of waste every day which all end up in one of three giant landfills including this one in the neighborhood of balwa the trash here has a bad habit of Catching Fire and causing major health problems for the people who live in the area it's also become what's known as a super emitter a Hotpot for Dangerous greenhouse gases thousands of people risk their lives collecting trash in one of India's largest landfills they sort all kinds of waste even used syringes in recent years fires have become more and more common threatening people who

35:36 work here and live nearby the balwa landfill burned for two months starting in April when temperatures soared over 110° F in New Delhi sahab lost plastic and scrap metal he'd been collecting for years firefighters extinguished the open Flames after about 2 weeks but people here are still struggling to breathe because they've

36:21 lived next to the smoldering plumes the whole time [Music] as garbage piles up and the planet warms landfill fires are expected to get worse we went to India to meet the people who make their living next to a flaming mountain of worldwide waste every day the tens of millions of people that live in the city of Delhi generate 10,000 metric tons of waste nearly all of it ends up in one of three surrounding landfills now most of these dump sites have gone beyond their capacity and

37:08 they're overflowing with waste and that's the real problem today Bala was supposed to close more than 10 years ago but it keeps accepting garbage up to 600 truckloads every day backhoe operators like Rahul move the waist to make Pathways for the trucks to drive to the top around 75,000 people known in India as rag Pickers make their living in deli's dumps

38:09 the average rag picker earns 200 to 300 rupees a day about $3 to4 with plastic and metal being the most valuable items collected even when they're not on fire the landfills pose major health risks Dr jasa has been treating patients who work at the bosswell landfill for over 20 years

39:01 bwa doesn't have a proper drainage system so runoff from the landfill makes its way into the [Music] groundwater scientists use the air quality index or aqi to measure air pollution and India has one of the worst measures in the world one study said air pollution led to more than 1.6 million premature deaths in 2019 then there's the

39:52 odor not to mention the everyday dangers of rag picking so how did the landfill fires start lithium ion batteries which are increasingly entering the waste stream can spontaneously explode but in India the brutal Heat Wave was the most likely culprit in addition to plastic and other

40:39 trash the methane from decomposing garbage fuels fire and these fumes contain all kinds of chemicals which can cause tuberculosis in the short term and cancer if inhaled over a long period of time the fires make a bad situation worse sah has lived and worked at bwell all his life

41:35 he set aside a large pile of scrap metal and plastic as a kind of life savings he was planning on trading in then the fires came putting out these fires requires a lot of Manpower and Equipment it took 80 trucks and 200 firefighters to quench the Flames that burned from April to June but mostly these fires fizzle out on their own

42:34 is only improves in certain months which are in and around Monsoon after the monsoon you'll find that you know because of the heavy rainfall it subsides and your particulate matter goes down and the air quality just comes up a little bit so the respite is for a brief period locals want these sites removed and the local government was fined nearly $65,000 for not taking proper measures to prevent the fire the Delhi government told us it's working to remove all 8 million metric

43:22 tons of waste from this site by the end of 2023 [Music] since 2019 the government has operated what are known as trls that separate recyclable trash from what can be burned to create energy the rest of the leftovers are supposed to get moved to a different dump site Deli plans on opening another waste processing facility here by 2025 and is supposed to expand services for ragpickers activists say one solution to the ever growing landfill is separating the waste before it gets there if you can reduce the waste amount by taking away the recyclables and the weight

44:08 waste or the bowte very small quantities will go to the landfill despite the increasing garbage problem the amount of waste Indians create per person is far lower than richer countries every day the average American throws out eight times as much plastic gar garbage as the average Indian but India's recycling industry is kept afloat by informal rag Pickers who make pennies a day for years India's federal government has tried to crack down on waste with tougher laws Banning most single-use plastic I think everything has been prescribed but unfortunately it's the

44:54 state government and the municipal people who are not following the rules at this point of time while these Solutions are debated and parts of the landfill continue to smolder the people dependent on it go out for another day of work because they have no other choice [Music]

45:43 the Ganges is one of the most polluted rivers in the world mostly because it's filled with untreated sewage but here's a type of waste you might not expect leftovers from religious rituals each Garland in this garbage truck started as an offering to the gods after they're used in worship tons of them get dumped into rivers or the sea every day alongside other religious leftovers like Idols immersed in waterways at yearly festivals now a handful of startups are proving they can make money by turning flower waste into natural dyes incense and products

46:31 sold by International Brands so far these companies have together handled thousands of tons of Temple leftovers can this upcycling keep Rivers clean while respecting an ancient practice we went to India to see how entrepreneurs are cashing in on sacred flowers daar flower market is one of the largest in Mumbai the main customers are smaller vendors who weave them into garlands to sell elsewhere like outside the nearby City vayak Temple but about 40% of the flowers produced in India don't actually sell including these ones piling up

47:19 behind the Market Street the offerings that do make it inside temples pose another challenge most Hindus consider it disrespectful to throw them in the trash opting to return them to Nature instead some people bury leftover offerings in gardens or flower pots others leave them out for animals to munch on but for temples that have to dispose of tons of offerings they often have few options besides dumping them in local waterways which in India are already contaminated with industrial pollution and raw sewage even though flowers are natural tossing tons of them into the water has

48:06 consequences pesticides and other harmful chemicals sprayed on flower crops can affect water's pH and as bacteria eat the organic waste they use up oxygen putting the entire ecosystem at [Music] risk Rupa traed grew up off ing flowers at temples she started to pay attention to the impact of religious waste about 15 years ago so she started a pure nature to turn flowers into natural DY for clothing I thought that if I could recycle and reuse something out of it even if it'll be only a drop in the ocean even a drop will make a difference and I really wanted to set up a business which had some soul in it and

48:53 which could always represent that soul to the world wellas one of rupa's employees is stationed outside the temple for a few hours every day he disassembles garlands and sorts the flowers by color twice per week another worker chiman travels 15 km each way to collect used offerings the temple Parts with the flowers for free but Rupa says paying workers to sort and collect temples offerings actually costs more than buying new flowers for her Fabrics it is definitely more expensive the purpose is that there are Temple blessings that are recycled and so there

49:40 is a definite meaning to the flowers here at the workshop in Mumbai workers unload the hall they separate pedals from the stems by hand so the marol are segregated and they are converted into petals and then it's kept for drying maragold are one of the most popular flowers in Hinduism they're said to be beloved by many different deities each flower has several meanings it's believed gods and goddesses each have their preferences like hibiscus for Ganesha holy basil for Vishnu or pink Lotus for Lakshmi ad's process uses a combination of fresh and dried petals which workers

50:25 lay here to dry out meanwhile others take on the more technical task of preparing the Fabrics the dying team weighs the material and calculates the rest of the recipe they measure out other ingredients that help color attached to fibers and then add it all to hot water once it reaches about 60° C or 140° F it's ready the Dyers lay out the damp Fabric and begin applying pedals this is the core uh technique that we've come up with which is called

51:10 the Ecco print [Music] this steamer helps the natural pigment transfer to the fabric mkar and tabasum have each worked here for more than a decade

52:07 the team washes the fabric in water and hangs it on a line to dry some natural dyes have unexpected results like red roses which can actually turn fabric blue with the right techniques and every time I've showed this as a as a scarf to anyone it they are just kind of flabbergasted that how can you get this uh red roses be this color these roses mainly come from the Ali mosque where they were used as decorations Rupa says the mosque provides up to 100 kg of flow waste each week while the sanak temple can provide that much in a single day adiv used to send its petals to a

52:55 local composter but the pandemic put a pause on that we have no option but to throw them away and I am hoping that maybe you know very shortly we be again be able to do what we were doing before so for now the pedals still end up in the trash but not polluting waterways or littering the streets from here the dyed fabric Heads next door to the Garment makers alav has worked here for 17 years [Music]

53:48 Rupa says hiring people who might have trouble finding work was one of her main goals when starting the business I believe that each of has have an artistic quality in us it is inherently there whether dormant or completely alive all together ad processes about 40 metric tons of petals from the nearby mosque and Temple each year not counting the stems plastic bits and other stuff they can't use but that's still less than half of the flower waste those places of worship produce adiv isn't the only business taking on India's religious leftovers Ankit Agarwal founded fool

54:33 which is the Hindi word for flower in 2017 the company turns flower waste into incense and I decided to quit my job and come back to kpur the reaction of the people I knew was I've gone Bonkers that I want to leave a job as a automation scientist and work with temple flowers full process also starts with collecting from temples followed by sorting de pedaling and drying once the petals are dry the team grinds them into a fine powder it's mixed by hand with water and essential oils until it reaches a clay-like texture then it's time to

55:21 roll workers dip their fingers into the Flower Powder while rolling to create an even thickness the company employs more than 700 women many of them used to work as waste scavengers we have been able to provide them with health benefits insurances retirement benefits and even a busing service the team lets the sticks dry before dipping them again in essential oils each worker can produce over 500 incense sticks in an hour Ankit says that in the beginning temples were reluctant to hand over the sacred flower waste so there's this line in the Hindu Ari which says which basically means what belongs to the gods goes back to

56:07 the gods so this is how I used to like convince them that these flowers don't belong to you or me they belong to the gods they've also started making vegan leather and a plastic foam alternative from the offerings another company called Help Us green makes incense and fragrances from flower waste all these flowers are converted into incense sticks and holy colors with the help of rural women thereby empowering them and providing a better livelihood for their next Generation ultimately flower waste is widespread the United States Imports over a billion short-lived blooms each year just for Valentine's Day in India flower recycling is on the rise and

56:55 these three startups handle thousands of tons of the waste annually over time that can make a real debt in the 2 million tons of loose flowers the country produces each year meanwhile other religious rituals have an impact too at annual ceremonies Believers submerge Idols representing Hindu deities in water afterwards cleanup Crews fish some statues out of the water but it's difficult to get them all those made of clay will dissolve but some are made of plaster which sticks around for years they can kill fish and plants and

57:41 even block the natural flow of water the good news is that awareness of these impacts is on the rise and some people are adapting by submerging Idols in tanks of water that are easier to clean up Rupa says that even though she know longer practices these rituals herself she still sees the beauty in them any human who is going in to offer these offerings to the gods is going with the purest of his heart one environmental educator said with increased awareness people will modify their rituals Hinduism nature go hand in hand Faith teaches us to to respect the protect the environment you can't ask someone to stop doing a practice that he or she has been for

58:27 Generations what we can do is make an economy around it so that everyone benefits meanwhile Indian waterways face even more pressing problems only about a third of India's urban homes are connected to a sewer system cities spew 16,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of untreated sewage into India's season Rivers every day Rupa says even in ch challenging conditions Artistry can Thrive an artisan can be Global and Universal he does not need to reside by the you know beautiful flowing river and have the trees swing just outside his

59:12 workplace it can be in this polluted [Music] city at aiv pure nature the team uses other waste products as ingredients too like coconut waste which can Dy fabric pink this is what I recycle by taking them from the coconut vendors on the roadside the company's main customers have included US Clothing companies like anthropology and Eileen Fischer even with big brands on board adiv isn't turning a profit yet we have been very uh lucky to get some very nice buyers who have constantly kept us going and appreciating our work but the company has also been growing along with it expenses have been mounting along with

59:59 it but right now rupa's mind is on other things for the past year she's undergone treatment for cancer it has been extremely debilitating for me myself uh I had come to a point where I would I was just talking to my you know my manager and telling her I need to close this down but her team stepped in and volunteered to take on her workload rupa's being supporting us all our lives so it's now my time to give away my best for her she's being like a mother figure for all of us they have said that ma'am you are coming back and I think that has been my

1:00:45 inspiration just to stay uh stay alive let me put it very frankly you know my illness was where uh it is much more sentence and staying alive but I think I'm existing because of this inspiration that has been with me all the time remember Centralia PA it turns out India has its own version of this natural disaster the neighborhood of jaria in jond looks like a scene from another world for over a century coal mines here have been burning relentlessly beneath the surface here teenage miners breathe in toxic fumes and scald their hands and feet while they work rinky Kumari has been working at India's

1:01:31 largest gold field since she was only 8 years old it's technically illegal for her to be here but she risks her life every day to help feed her family she inhales toxic smoke and often Burns her hands and [Music] feet but at 17 she still endures these brutal conditions with a

1:02:17 [Music] smile we followed this young woman to see why people here keep working in such a risky business generation after [Music] [Music] generation rinky and her mom stop and pray to KI the goddess of death on their way to the jeria Coal Field coal collectors built the shrine

1:03:04 to honor people who died [Music] here most of the official mines are operated by a subsidiary of government-owned coal India called bhat cooking coal limited or [Music] bccl people like rinky Dodge police to sneak in and [Music] scavenge the best time to avoid getting caught is from 4: to 10 in the morning any later in the day it gets feverishly hot

1:04:03 rinky has been injured a few [Applause] times she lost a friend in the mines a few years ago but [Music]

1:04:50 rink's friend lxmi is just 12 years old and she often collects the same amount of coal as an adult rink's basket weighs as much as she does around 90 [Music] lb rinky walks about 8 miles a day making several trips from the mine to her home to drop off the coal [Music]

1:05:58 [Music] [Music] when she gets home she cooks the coal to make it usable as fuel rinky makes about 8 to 900 rupees a week selling coal in the market to locals and [Applause]

1:06:43 restaurants in India that's about $11 roughly the cost of a pair of sneakers but the risks don't end when she leaves the mines and the same thing that helps rinky support her family is also making them sick coal deposits contaminate nearby rivers and streams especially during monsoon season [Music]

1:07:35 nearby hospitals like this one are overflowing with patients who work in the mines Dr Ramesh Kumar Sharma sees about 150 patients a day [Music] [Music] jia's air quality is one of the worst in the world the coal underground has been burning for more than 100 years experts say it catches fire on its own when exposed to oxygen flammable gases like methane and

1:08:23 carbon monoxide seat through homes the floor in her house is always hot [Music] The Mining Company frequently explodes

1:09:10 Dynamite to expose the coal that's destabilized the entire neighborhood of jeria creating cracks in the earth and swallowing up homes boom rink's house made of concrete blocks is slowly sinking rink's father remembers what life was like in jaria when they moved here in 2005

1:10:01 now the fires have spread so much that bccl is moving thousands of families out of cheria but the process has been slow many locals say they don't want to move far away from the mins where they work others are mistrustful of bccl's motives Insider reached out to bccl for comment but did not hear back coal consumption is on the decline in many countries but not here India is the second largest consumer in the world coal fuels 70% of the electricity grid and with a Nationwide Energy shortage

1:10:47 unfolding the government is doubling down it plans to reopen 100 Old Mines this year e r n s but rinky doesn't want to be here forever four years ago she got an opportunity that could change her [Music] [Applause] life she joined the coldfield children classes run by an NGO about 100 kids are enrolled here

1:11:34 and she has Big [Music] Dreams even though she's still figuring out her next step rinky tries to find bright spots in the risky job she must keep doing for now Indonesia struggles with dirty air unclean water and gigantic landfills here are a few stories about the people trying to make a living in the most

1:12:19 polluted places in the country Scavenging for rusted crap metal is one of the only ways widows in Jakarta can make money the women search for Iron and Steel from used ships in one of the most polluted Waters in the world dri is 63 years old but she has been the main bread winner for her three kids since her husband died

1:13:07 everything she touches has poisonous layers of rust ship recycling is a multi-billion dollar Global industry and massive yards across the world break down everything from cruise liners cargo vessels and oil tankers to Naval warships but these women make only about $2 a day selling small pieces so why are so many widows stuck Scavenging like this and what makes it such a risky business

1:13:52 [Music] every morning dri leaves her 10-month-old granddaughter behind and goes to work she has always had a job even before she got married at 19 but things have been tough since her husband passed away 13 years ago widows often struggle to find jobs in Indonesia because many believe they can bring bad luck but the owner of this shipbreaking company lets widows scavenge for

1:14:44 [Music] free the women are only allowed to collect small pieces like these the larger chunks belong to the ship owners to sell or reuse

1:15:29 most of the valuable pieces are underwater near the ships the three uses a magnetic stick to find the metal for 13 Rivers empty into charda Bay carrying with them sewage toxins and all kinds of trash the three's thick gloves and socks

1:16:16 don't always protect her once she stepped on a nail that went right through her foot welders are constantly sawing off hot pieces of metal so she has to be careful dri says even though the job is dangerous she's still proud of making her own

1:17:02 money around noon the women escape the heat with a quick lunch break there are about 10 million widows like them across Indonesia and most live in extreme poverty some turn to sex work to survive others are forced to send their children to work to make ends meet Amina wanted to avoid that so she took this job at the scrapyard 37 years ago today at 61 years old she has many health issues including severe arthritis

1:18:02 and she's afraid she will run out of breath and drown because she has heart problems on a really good day she collects as much as 200 kg and sells it for almost [Music] $3 with that she can buy about four cups of rice for [Music] dinner her salary isn't enough to pay

1:18:48 for her treatments but she's too sick to find another job [Music] nowadays her children work but Amina still helps with all the bills and she'd rather scavenge than go into debt

1:19:39 the widows sell The Rusted scraps to narwin a middleman for this is one of two shipbreaking yards in Jakarta it takes 20 workers at least a week to cut down an entire ship depending on its size most ships have a lifespan of 25 to 30 years after which they're retired but

1:20:28 they have hazardous materials inside things like Asbestos and pipes heavy metals and paints biological hazards from sewage tanks radioactive material from gauges and the list goes on left unchecked they can seep into the soil Beach and water near ship breaking yards and Destroy local Marine habitats but there are also many usable parts of a ship including metal bars and plates those are recycled and sometimes used to make new ships or heavy machinery experts say this is a Greener alternative to producing new steel which uses a lot of energy and it also saves the planet from

1:21:13 more metal mining so while workers like dri and Amina play a crucial role in building a more sustainable industry the prophets and the praise are not trickling down to [Music] them both widows live in this Colony it's one of the poorest areas in Jakarta most of their neighbors also break down ships at the scrapyard or fish along the coast [Music]

1:22:05 dri raised her three sons here mostly on her own her husband died when the youngest was just 11 and she never considered marrying again now her kids are all grown up but she shares her home with one of her sons and helped support his wife and their baby [Music]

1:22:55 [Music] her other kids rely on her too that says her faith in God has helped her through the tough [Music]

1:23:45 [Music] times for almost two decades this man has climbed a mountain of trap he scavenges for anything he can sell or bring to his family rid and thousands of others are one of the main ways trash gets sorted sold reused and sometimes recycled here

1:24:32 in [Music] Indonesia many like indan used to be rice Farmers but found they can make twice as much picking trash so what's it like for the thousands of Indonesians who live off of other people's garbage and how did this informal recycling industry become such a risky

1:25:19 business the bantar bang landfill near Jakarta is the size of 200 football fields it's one of the largest in the world around 6,000 people live in slums at its base indan has been living here for 2 years at first he was afraid to eat the food he collected from the mountain but now ald B

1:26:09 [Music] a few houses away

1:26:56 rine is getting ready to go out for the day [Laughter] [Music] [Music]

1:27:45 [Music] 13 00 trucks arrive here every day mostly from Indonesia's Capital Jakarta people doing this work call themselves B which translates to scavenger they work independently but need permission from the government to enter the landfill the biggest dangers on the job are the excavators they are owned and operated by the Jakarta provincial

1:28:31 [Music] government they move the trash around so that this mountain doesn't collapse Dan Kwan has been operating one of them for 18 years for

1:29:33 had a close call once but he continues to work near them because they usually operate where new trash arrives recycling facilities mostly take

1:30:18 bottles cardboard and metal but local Artisans will pay good money for bones to make jewelry methane's an invisible threat at barar gibang the gas comes from rotting food wood and paper when there's too much of it people can

1:31:08 suffocate and it can cause deadly eruptions in 2005 trapped methane exploded at a dump site in Java and triggered an avalanch that buried dozens of homes and killed 143 three people most of them were scavengers living near the landfill but nothing stops theine from coming to [Music] work andan he makes around 25

1:31:54 a week that's about a third of Indonesia's minimum wage but still more than what Farmers make sells his Goods to middlemen like ADI who then sells them to another trash buyer as many as 20,000 families here depend on bontar bang to make a

1:32:41 living this land used to be mostly forest and rice fields until the 1980s trash has been piling up ever since [Music] for rasidin has five

1:33:28 children and he dreams they might one day make it out of here [Music]

1:34:17 and indan has a message for the wealthy [Music] these oil wells are stuck in the past and for over 100 years now this has been the most lucrative job in this remote part of

1:35:02 Indonesia where the land has been ruined by toxic leaks workers risk their lives to extract the little that's left but they don't even own that oil they're forced to sell to the state company which locals say barely pays them enough to get by so why do these toxic old Wells still exist and how did thousands of people end up trapped working in them

1:35:50 [Music] ponnie learned to extract oil when he was just 19 now he is teaching his nephew many of the 700 oil wells near his village in East Java were built by the Dutch in the late 1800s nowadays locals own most of them but only about 200 still work always prays with his colleagues before starting his

1:36:48 day the basic tools they rely on are improvised and rustic like this engine they've removed from an old dump truck they have to step on gas and brake pedals to dip and lift this pipe that goes in it's called a Bor it has little holes in the side to let oil in and out they need enough rope to lower the

1:37:36 Bor all the way down into the oil Reserve at this location the crude is found about 1,000 ft below a depth almost equal to the height of Indonesia's tallest building when the Bor hits bottom the holes open up inside letting oil in then when the Rope starts tugging up the holes close trapping the oil inside the tube ponie uses this heavy iron Rod to guide the Bor down sometimes accidents happen

1:38:26 the whole process is messy ponnie says he sometimes wears a mask to protect himself from the liquid that sprays out but what he fears most is a possible explosion the old equipment can overheat and Catch Fire with all this oil around an open flame can quickly spark an inferno in in June a fire at another well in Sumatra killed four workers it's also hard to maintain these Wells over time they're too narrow and far too deep for people to crawl in and fix from inside

1:39:28 sometimes mud clogs up the well and prevents the Bor from reaching the oil the extracted oil runs off into these pools in its cre F form it's mixed with mud and water the oil floats to the top in a matter of minutes and workers scoop it out ponnie's nephew Jook Mulo helps they use a vacuum to transfer the

1:40:15 oil onto the car about 200 years ago before these oil wells existed crude naturally oozed out of the ground here locals gathered small amounts to light lamps and make medicine but in 1887 the duch who colonized Indonesia set up a large scale drilling operation their Oil Company Royal Dutch managed many Wells and refineries in East Java and brought in workers who were paid low wages to help work for them as demand for oil boomed around the world Drilling in Indonesia expanded too and this land became

1:41:00 unrecognizable the duch left after Indonesia gained independence in 1945 but the oil that had leaked from the wells had already polluted the surrounding Earth in water making farming the work that had sustained locals long before these Wells existed much harder extracting oil became the most lucra of work but there wasn't nearly as much as before when ponnie started this job in 2004 they could draw up to 900 gallons from this well in a day now it takes him one week to get 55 gallons there's more underground but the well is too shallow to reach it and pony doesn't

1:41:46 have the Machinery to drill deeper even though workers own the land the state-owned company possesses the right to all the oil underground so by law workers have to sell their oil to the company through a local government Enterprise but they often make more money selling it to off the radar refineries instead where ponie can make two times what pamina would pay latest estimates from 2014 found that the state company was losing nearly $1 million annually to workers who sell their oil

1:42:35 independently even after selling on the black market workers still only make about $12 a week which is not a lot even in this part of Indonesia that's why most of the workers bring lunch from home and share it with the others ponie pays his nephew Joko an additional $6 weekly to drive the oil to the [Music] refinery that's become its own profession

1:43:44 Joo has been at it for 16 years now he used to make around 10 trips a day each for a different well owner but that's drop down to just four or five on a busy day ponnie's neighbor ginori processes the oil at this artisanal Refinery using traditional

1:44:39 techniques he works 13-hour days carrying 20 lb containers filled with crude up and down these Hills he dumps them into these 60-gallon drums first ginori lights this underground furnace [Music] he'll use it to heat the crude in this

1:45:26 drum he fills it halfway to give it space to boil it has to reach at least 570° F before it starts evaporating which is key to refining it the vapor comes up through these pipes which are cooled with water that turns the vapor back into a liquid they bring that refined fuel to the boiler and heat it once more until it evaporates back through these pipes ginori repeats this process

1:46:12 three or four times to get different types of fuel like gasoline and all day long workers here are breathing these fumes a combination of nitrogen methane and carbon monoxide which can cause cancer and brain damage and if the gases get trapped underground everything could explode

1:46:57 and an entire day's work only fetches about one drum of diesel that's about enough to fill a car three times refineries are also required to sell their oil to pamina but many sell at small black markets like this one locals buy oil for $227 per gallon that's double what Perina would pay for it although the price fluctuates based on global oil prices the quality of the artisanal oil is inferior so locals mostly use it to fuel the engines in their Wells some also use it in their cars

1:47:45 because the nearest gas station is 60 M away that trip would cost them more in gas than they make in a day Indonesia has enough oil reserves underground to power the entire country for at least 4 years still it Imports about half of the oil it consumes and these artisanal workers aren't allowed to dig new wells on their own land they could get all their oil extraction rights revoked instead they have to allow large companies to drill on their property a law the country pass in 2001 to boost foreign investment and ramp up oil drilling that year Exxon Mobile discovered an oil field nearby and soon

1:48:33 signed on to help Bina develop it buying out 3,000 small land owners first the plant started extracting in 2008 and now produces about 2,000 barrels annually about a quarter of the country's oil output but locals say what they really need from the government is funding for better Machinery so they can develop their fields themselves so workers find ways to make due on their own because they say they

1:49:18 have to they keep digging more Wells like these to tap as many shallow reserves as they can According to some estimates output from illegally dug Wells is outpacing production at the legal ones by about 10 barrels a day meanwhile locals feel trapped in work that's damaged their land and now

1:50:05 seems like their only option for a stable income [Music] P's family grew mangoes here for Generations but for the last few years his crops have kept dying

1:50:59 still he's grateful for every drop of oil he can get and that it's made it possible for his daughter to go to school and to have a better life than he did back in the United States one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the country is just a short train ride away from New York City children with asthma are hospitalized at a rate 30 times higher than the rest of the country the Ironbound neighborhood in New York New Jersey is home to contaminants from multiple angles which drove the community to speak up for some serious [Music] changes 6 days a week thousands of tons of garbage land in one tiny corner of

1:51:46 New Jersey this is the Ironbound we don't get States up and down the East Coast send all kinds of waste here there's also a factory that melts down animal parts from slaughter houses a 17m stretch of river full of cancer-causing chemicals pollution from an International Airport a tangle of truck filed highways hundreds of lots where old businesses Left Behind toxic chemicals or other potential problems and one of the largest sewage plants in the US people say it smells like New Jersey it actually smells like the waste of the region right the Ironbound is also one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the state what do we

1:52:34 want when do we want it most families here are working class and more than half are black or Latino we're just a dumping ground there's so many waste related facilities in addition to the incinerator because we're not a poor City we're stolen from City we've been exploited people have been stealing and building their we both off of our lungs off of our backs Nationwide black Americans are 75% more likely than others to live near hazardous waste enough is enough Children Here grow up breathing pollution linked to cancer and heart attacks and they have asthma at a rate more than three times higher than the rest of the country no I I have asthma my nephew have asthma

1:53:22 you know my mom has asthma I'm assume it's cuz we live in Ironbound right but it can be very hard to prove who is responsible for what really the kicker is that we can never Trace someone's asthma to a facility or to a a truck there's so many things in that [Music] neighborhood locals have been fighting to clean up this neighborhood for more than 50 years in 2020 they finally scored a big win New Jersey passed a law that could stop major polluters from piling up in one place must s we can't s but is one law enough to protect this community from hundreds of years of worldwide waste

1:54:07 stop jumping stop [Music] dumping historians think the Ironbound got its name from the train tracks built around it in the 1800s when industrialization transformed the whole city of nework any i' will tell you where this is the third busiest Corner in the world by the 1960s heavy industry dotted the riverfront including oil refineries and chemical plants in 1969 a group of residents banded together to lobby for more resources for the neighborhood eventually they formed a nonprofit called the Ironbound Community Corporation or ICC today environmental justice is one

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