BBC revisit sweltering Blood Bricks kilns

A Cambodian brick kiln burning fast fashion by Thomas Cristofoletti (copyright Thomas Cristofoletti/ Ruom https://www.thomascristofoletti.com)

The BBC have revisited the Blood Bricks kilns the study was based in to discover what conditions are like today. Their news reporting, including on radio and television, tells a story of continued hardship and inaction. Fast fashion is still being used as fuel in the kilns and workers’ health is suffering from working in excessive heat. The kiln is described as a ‘burning prison’.

Learn more from the BBC’s Laura Bicker in the print article “Fast fashion helps fuel blazing kilns where workers faint from heat”

Blood Bricks leads to Greenpeace investigation

The ooze of burning garments in a Cambodian brick kiln

An Unearthed investigation has revealed how off-cuts from Cambodian factories supplying major brands are being used to fuel brick kilns – exposing workers to toxic fumes. This new investigation took place after the practice was first revealed in the Blood Bricks research and its project report published in 2018.

Dr Laurie Parsons, co-investigator on the Blood Bricks project spoke to the Unearthed team about the findings:

“The burning of acrylic garments, especially when combined with plastic bags, hangers, rubber and other waste as occurs in Cambodia, releases plastic microfibres and other toxic chemicals into the immediate environment which compromise the health of workers and neighbours on a short and long term basis. The human impacts, in particular, are substantially worse than burning wood and have been highlighted in a recent UK parliamentary report as a major problem in the industry,”

Unearthed is Greenpeace UK’s award-winning journalism project. For more information on the Blood Bricks findings, read our blog on this issue, report and open access journal article published on ‘Discardscapes of fashion: Commodity biography, patch geographies, and preconsumer garment waste in Cambodia’.

Blood Bricks wins Times Higher Education Award

Blood Bricks project infographic

Blood Bricks has been awarded “Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences” by the Times Higher Education Awards 2020.

The “Research Project of the Year” is awarded to the individual or team at a UK HE institution for innovative arts, humanities or social sciences research that has a far-reaching impact and has caught, or has the potential to catch, the imagination of the public.

The judges were ‘overwhelmingly impressed’ by the Blood Bricks project as ‘a commendable example of skilled, interventionist research’ that told ‘clearly and effectively’ the ‘sobering stories’ of those trapped in debt bondage.

It had also “found excellent ways of publicising its findings and means by which to draw political attention to them, including high-profile transnational media reporting and governmental briefings. Its impacts include pending legal action in the United Nations, and material made available locally for wage negotiations, legislative change and action on child labour.”

The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The photographer on the project was Thomas Cristofoletti and the graphic designers Bison Bison.

Royal Holloway have released this press release.

End 'Blood Bricks' – launch of Crowd Justice fundraising campaign to end modern slavery & child labour in Cambodia's kilns

Photograph of a child labourer in a Cambodian brick kiln by Thomas Cristofoletti (copyright Thomas Cristofoletti/ Ruom https://www.thomascristofoletti.com)

Help us to call-out investors driving modern slavery, child labour and dangerous working conditions within Cambodian brick kilns by donating to our Crowd Justice fundraising campaign HERE.

Cambodia is in the midst of a construction boom fuelling the demand for huge quantities of bricks. Meeting this demand are 10,000 adults and children working as debt-bonded labourers in its 450 kilns.

The kiln workers begin as indebted farmers and labourers in rural Cambodia. Due to floods and droughts brought about by climate change, as well as a lack of affordable health services and an under-regulated microfinance sector, their debts begin to spiral. They therefore had no choice but to accept loans from brick factories.

In return for such loans, whole families are forced to move to brick kilns to work off their debt bond, over years and even generations. Debt bondage is the most common form of ‘modern slavery’ in the world.

Wages are very low, so many workers take years to pay back their debt-bond, or even pass it on to the next generation. Children as young as 12 have to work on-site producing these 'blood bricks', even though child labour is illegal in Cambodia. Labourers are commonly prohibited from leaving, and are often arrested and brought back if they try to escape. Conditions in the kilns are dire, with many reported injuries and even unexplained mortalities. 

It is a grave injustice that people should be exploited in this way.  It is especially shocking because their labour is being used primarily to build luxury hotels and tower blocks – some of which are being funded by western banks and invested in by UK pension funds.

We intend to expose the kiln owners and the investors who turn a blind eye, and profit from modern slavery.

In 2018, we produced a report shining a light on this issue, which you can read here. 

The practices have not changed: families are still suffering, and children are still being robbed of their childhood by debt bonded labour in these kilns. Furthermore, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, an employment crisis in Cambodia means that thousands more families will likely move to brick kilns in the coming months as a way of paying off debts, and end up in perpetual bondage.

Now, we want to bring a legal case against the individuals and corporations profiting from this system, but we can only do so with your help. We are looking to submit a petition to the UN, which would bring tangible pressure upon both investors and the national government. These petitions have a history of bringing about change. We want to ensure that brick workers receive fair wages and good working conditions, and even compensation for past exploitation. 

Our legal team at Payne Hicks Beach and barristers Ben Douglas-Jones QC, 5 Paper Buildings, Shu Shin Luh, Doughty Street Chambers and Ella Gunn, Garden Court Chambers are working pro bono, but we need to raise enough money to carry out further investigative work to compile the forensic evidence for legal action. 

Please support us and ensure that debt bondage and child labour are no longer an acceptable means of providing profits for construction tycoons and brick sector industrialists.

Thank you.

Professor Katherine Brickell, Dr Laurie Parsons (both Royal Holloway, University of London) and Dr Nithya Natarajan (King’s College London)

The Blood Bricks study has been shortlisted for “Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences” by the Times Higher Education Awards 2020. Please note that legal advice by its nature may suggest exploring other avenues of litigation and we reserve the right to apply funds raised to other aspects of litigation to expose these human rights abuses.

Blood Bricks present their research to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)

This 20 minute video tells untold stories of brick workers in Cambodia. Their life stories show the urgent need for modern slavery and climate change to be tackled in tandem. The video reveals the UK's indirect complicity in these, from its opaque commodity chains to use of the carbon loophole of international trade in its accounting.

The video was shown to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Home Office in September 2020 at a learning event on "Evidence dialogues on Modern Slavery and Vulnerability to Climate Change”.

The talk is based on research joint funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and FCDO, namely Blood Bricks (@ Blood_Bricks) and the Disaster Trade (@DisasterTrade_).

Blood Bricks has been shortlisted for “Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences” by the Times Higher Education Awards 2020.

Discardscapes of Preconsumer Garment Waste in Pandemic Times

A family walking past a brick kiln (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

Not far from Phnom Penh, a mother walks along balancing her youngest son against her hip, whilst her eldest clutches her hand. Their walk, taken multiple times a day, is past a brick kiln fuelled by the multi-coloured garment waste that can be seen spilling out of plastic bags. As part of a debt-bonded migrant workforce, the family work and live on site, their corrugated tin home located just metres from where the garment waste is being burned. The kiln is part of Cambodia’s lucrative domestic brick-making industry, feeding and fed by Phnom Penh’s construction boom. Rather than relying on wood for its fuel the kiln owners use off-cuts from the country’s garment factories, sourced mainly from a dedicated dump. Those garment factories comprise Cambodia’s principal export-focused manufacturing sector, supplying particularly European, fast-fashion retailers. A national-level survey of all brick kilns (2020) recorded that 23 kilns out of 465 (4.9% of all kilns) use garments as fuel. 

In our newly published (open access) journal article in Social & Cultural Geography, we explain how current understanding of fashion waste is limited by its predominant focus on postconsumer geographies of clothing discard in the global north. The article advocates for greater attention to preconsumer garment waste in the global south: the multiple industries which collect, materially transform, and profit from it; and the lives of precarious workers who are incorporated into, and are formative of, these discardscapes of fashion. 

Based on extensive mixed-method interview data, investigative research, documentary photography and particulate air readings undertaken in Cambodia between 2017 and 2019, we provides new insights into the journey of preconsumer garment waste from Cambodia’s factories to the brick kiln via a dedicated garment dump.

These insights are especially prescient at a time when COVID-19 is sending demand shocks through the global garment industry. The majority of press coverage about a ‘new wave’ of garment waste linked to the pandemic is focused, again, on post consumer waste in the global north; the closure of charity shops and the limited storage capacity of recyclers (see also here). But manufacturing shutdowns in the Asian region and consumer lockdowns in the EU and US have also led international retailers to cancel orders. EURATEX, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, has conducted a survey among European companies showing that more than half of the companies expect a drop in sales and production by more than 50%. The Blood Bricks team are concerned about where these clothes may end up. As a former Cambodian garment factory manager reveals, it is his ‘reasonably informed hunch that the canceled orders will either go to landfill or be incinerated’.

The burning of garment waste has been described by Orsola de Castro, co-founder and creative director of activist group Fashion Revolution, as the fashion industry’s ‘dirtiest open secret’. In July 2018, high-end British fashion brand Burberry hit the headlines. It had burned unsold clothes, accessories, and perfume of an estimated worth of £28.6m to protect its brand.  The story broke only two months after the brand announced it was a core signatory to Making Fashion Circular, an initiative aiming to design waste out of fashion and keep resources in circulation. As journalist Lucy Siegle points out to the contrary, ‘When you cremate clothes, that’s obviously not going to happen. The materials are lost. It’s the antithesis of the circular economy.’ The Burberry expose, moreover, is not an exceptional, one-off event, but is more routine within the fashion industry. Swedish fashion retailer H&M, for example, has also stood accused of burning 12 tonnes of unsold garments per year despite its ongoing sustainability efforts to close the loop in fashion. While these high profile cases relate to the intentional burning of ‘dead stock’ over intellectual property and brand image concerns, our newly published article explores the overlooked significance and meaning of preconsumer waste in the form of off-cuts and labels, which have not dissimilar risks for fashion brands if identified and publicised in the public realm. 

Our concern is that a further excess of preconsumer garment waste will be amassed through the cancellation of orders linked to the pandemic. With the Cambodian construction sector slowed by the pandemic, the demand for bricks may contract, and their prices likely squeezed. The temptation of brick kiln owners looking to maintain their profit margins could rely partly or in full on garment waste to lower fuel costs. Excess garment waste may be headed for Cambodian brick kilns, with toxic consequences for its workers and the environment.

Toxic fashion

Offcuts, even before the COVID-19 crisis, were readily available and are a cheaper and less environmentally regulated alternative to using forest wood as kiln fuel. Hundreds of brand labels could be found amongst the scrap fabric at our case study kiln factories. Those identified included British (Marks and Spencer; George at Asda), Spanish (Pull&Bear) and US-run companies (J Crew; Walmart; Old Navy). Returning to the kiln site for the final visit in February 2019, the academic researchers found different labels this time, but interviewed a family who were hanging out their clothes to dry with M&S hangers. We reported our findings to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, who contacted the brands. All the brands’ replies can be found here, except Old Navy who did not respond.

Labels found at a Cambodian brick kiln (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

With no let-up in the use of garment waste across 2018 and into 2019, workers consistently felt that the switch from wood to garment waste had adverse impacts. The garment burning, often for several weeks at a time, had a profound influence on residents’ health. Brick workers and their families have no protection. Even men who stoke the fire typically do so without a mask, and others try and make do with only cloth over their mouth and eyes.

Stoking the fire with preconsumer garment waste (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

The 2018 ‘State of Global Air’ report found that in India, which has a ‘brick belt’ across the central regions of the country, smoke emerging from kilns is the sixth-highest cause of respiratory-related deaths in the country. An estimated 24,100 deaths were caused in India by the pollution caused by brick production.

No similar analysis exists vis-à-vis the Cambodian brick industry, however palpable health impacts upon kiln workers were reported in interviews. Clothing commonly contains toxic chemicals including chlorine bleach, formaldehyde, and ammonia. Heavy metals, PVC, and resins are also commonly involved in dyeing and printing processes. The academic researchers inspected and photographed many of the labels on the brick kiln sites. Typically, the clothing was a mix of cotton with elastane and/or polyester. Human-made materials, such as polyester, make up the vast majority of clothing made and discarded globally.

The oily ooze of burning garment waste (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

The commonplace noting of respiratory issues in our research speaks to the degradation of peoples’ lungs in the brick-making sector. The particulate analysis we did when the garments were being burned showed consistent readings for PM2.5 and PM10 of 999.9 micrograms per cubic meter of air (ug/m3), the maximum readings possible on our sensors, and at a level classed as hazardous. PM2.5 poses considerable health risks as fine particles can get deep into human lungs and even the bloodstream, with exposure affecting both respiratory and circulatory systems. Coarse particles (PM10) are known to irritate a person's eyes, nose, and throat. 

Interviews we conducted brought home how workers’ ‘choice’ to work in the kiln had been conditioned by a lack of alternative livelihoods given joblessness and poverty in the villages from which the workers originated. Other workers expressed fear, and suggested that they dared not complain about the garment burning given their reliance on, and debt to, the brick kiln owner. Workers were distressed, and were said to be miserable, about the ‘black air flying around’, sucked into their noses, and which meant they needed to brush their beds before going to sleep. According to several workers who had tried to raise the problem with the brick kiln owner, they had failed to listen or act, despite knowing of these negative effects.

Dumped

The garment dump from the air (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

Garment waste is sourced by kiln-owners via intermediary systems of waste management. Our research found that preconsumer waste from garment factories is transported primarily to a vast privately-owned dump site on the 50 trucks of an independent sub-contractor who exclusively sources and collects scraps from the garment factories located in Phnom Penh’s industrial complexes.

Whilst the dump had limited offerings, it afforded materials that allowed workers to create economic value, though at a problematically low level. The majority of pickers interviewed were in their forties and fifties, and several had daughters working in the nearby garment factories. They had come to work on the dump after accruing microfinance loan debts. As at the brick kilns, then, work here is linked to debt, though crucially with greater freedoms than debt bondage allows. Dump workers are independent, are free to come and go as they choose, and tend not borrow money from the dump owner.

Several workers reported that the rainy season made picking difficult and the income that could be derived was inconsistent as a result. One worker complained that she regularly needed to go to hospital because of bacterial infections she contracted on the pathogen-heavy dump. While the dump was used almost exclusively for garment waste, areas of organic material were scattered around, which the foreman explained came from beer factories. Animals also roamed freely around the site.

Picking on the garment dump (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

Fainting was described as a regular occurrence by the dump’s workers, with the heat and lack of food taking its toll. Spontaneous fires were also a problem, arising due to the extreme heat beating down on the garments and the emission of gases. Despite the precarious nature of the work and the income it generated, and the harmful material conditions of the dump, picking over the waste provided a means of just about surviving for the workers we met.

Preconsumer waste and fashion brand responsibility in pandemic times

Widespread academic and policy concern with postconsumer garment disposal needs to be matched by research on preconsumer waste, which up until now has been unduly neglected. A corrective emphasis on preconsumer waste also reorients attention to networks of waste management within the Global South, linked to areas of mass garment production for consumers in the Global North. As it stands the governance of such networks is weak, in part because the geographies of preconsumer discardscapes are ‘patchy’. They sits uneasily with linear models of commodity chains and responsibility. Fashion brands use this patchy geography as they look to externalise this waste and to resist connection to, for example, families locked into debt-bonded labour in Cambodian brick kilns. Communications about where garment waste, including materialisations of their brand labelling, is travelling hence stay unanswered, as part of an apparent attempt to bound what parts of the production and discard networks are their concern. To the detriment of brick kiln workers and the environment at large, it is more important than ever in pandemic times that the production and disposal of preconsumer waste is tackled.

The Next Frontier of Climate Policy: Joining the Dots of Bricks, Trade and Embodied Emissions from Cambodia and Bangladesh to the UK

A brick kiln burning at night (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

Blood Bricks team member Laurie Parsons has recently received funding for a new project examining the human and environmental footprint of British trade in the global South. Entitled, ‘The Next Frontier of Climate Policy: Joining the Dots of Bricks, Trade and Embodied Emissions from Cambodia and Bangladesh to the UK’, this 12 month study will examine the intersections between poverty, environmental sustainability and fragility of livelihoods and will bring together experts in trade and supply chain analysis, embodied emissions and construction, from Bangladesh, Cambodia  and the UK, to examine how UK trade exacerbates the human and environmental impacts of disasters such as floods, droughts and heatwaves in the global South.

Funded in partnership with the UK Department for International Development, the project will facilitate experts working with UK government and the global construction industry on the environmental and human impacts of international trade, which also contributes to the global climate emergency. Total funding from the ESRC and project partners amounts to £185,000.

The social and environmental footprint of the UK’s billion-pound trade with Cambodia will be demonstrated by an expanded supply chain analysis which will investigate the environmental and human cost of the clothes we wear, both in terms of local ecological pressures and the UK’s wider carbon footprint.  

It will also calculate the emissions embodied in the growing number of bricks imported to the UK from Bangladesh and other countries in the region, where brick production is associated with ‘toxic fumes and atrocious conditions’ (Climate and Clean Air Commission, 2019). This is alongside the growing concerns over the impact of air pollution and massive topsoil harvesting for the brick industry on local people’s ability to sustain traditional livelihoods, triggering mass migration into Bangladesh’s urban centres (Dhaka Tribune, 2019).

The research study will involve a series of workshops and events aimed at policymakers, construction industry stakeholders and the public, highlighting the growing importance of this phenomenon and it’s concerning implications for sustainable development goals.

This work will build on the achievements of Royal Holloway’s impactful research into converging traumas of modern slavery and climate change in urban development,  Blood Bricks: Untold Stories of Modern Slavery and Climate Change in Cambodia, also funded by ESRC-DFID Development Frontiers Research Fund in 2017-2019, the research programme will extend the in-country benefit of those projects.

National Survey of the Cambodian Brick Industry: Population, Geography, Practice

Brick worker extracting clay (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)

In February this year, our research led to the commissioning of a national survey in partnership with the Building Workers Trade Union of Cambodia, the US based NGO Solidarity Centre and Solidaire Swiss. Although formally distinct from the Blood Bricks project itself, this survey, led by Blood Bricks team member Laurie Parsons, aimed to answer some of the unanswered quantitative questions raised our earlier report. In contrast to the intensive method employed in the Blood Bricks project, this large scale survey collected data on every currently operational brick kiln in Cambodia in order to ascertain the size of the industry and obtain key data on the working population. 

As reported by Reuters and Voice of America, the overall figures in this respect indicate 464 operational kilns, located predominantly along Cambodia’s major waterways, in particular the Mekong and the Tonle Sap and an overall current population – i.e. those currently resident within brick kilns – of 10,217 people, of whom 4777 are female and 5440 are male. Amongst these, 3937 people are currently aged under 18. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of those resident in brick kilns report not currently being employed in it. The total number of those confirming their employment in the brick industry is 6863 people of which 3098 are female, 3765 are male and 638 are aged under 18. It should, however, be noted that the sometimes casual nature of brick work, whereby workers are paid on a piece rate basis and family labour is used ad hoc at busy periods, may mean that these figures underestimate the true extent of underage labour.

Like the majority of the industrial workforce in Cambodia, the data in the report shows that brick workers are predominantly migrant workers. Brick workers not only originate from every province in Cambodia but also from Vietnam in some cases. Nevertheless, the data demonstrate clear patterns in the province of origin of the brick kiln residents, with migrants from Kandal – at 2508 and 24.4%  – and Prey Veng – at 2345 and 22.8% – making up almost half of the current brick kiln population. Moreover, viewed at a smaller scale, brick worker locations of origin are observed to be even more geographically concentrated. In total, 24 districts in Cambodia supply over 100 workers to the brick industry each, whilst three districts: Preah Sdach in Prey Veng, and Mukh Kampul and Ksach Kandal in Kandal province each supply over 500 workers to the brick industry. Mukh Kampul alone supplies over 1200, over 1/8th of the brick kiln population of Cambodia.

The data in this report are now being used as the basis of efforts by the Ministry of Labor to move forward in improving conditions in the Cambodian brick industry. Working in collaboration with the Building Workers Trade Union of Cambodia, this is expected to involve improved safety provisions for workers and efforts to alleviate some of the issues drawing workers into the industry from key rural hotspots.