Wack-tory visits

I visited three factories that The Corporation works with today. They were three very different factories, but each interesting in its own way.

First we visited a leather accessories factory where I got to see belts in production: simple dress belts, woven belts and colorful patchwork belts. None of these were for The Corporation, but I did see one of our leather hair-ties being made. It was in the shape of a flower. A flower that was formerly a cow's hide.

The leather factory was very interesting because it had such a different feel from garment factories. This one was very clean, spacious and organized. I realized that leather goods take much more work than I could have ever imagined. People hammered leather to soften it, people braided leather straps, machines die-cut shapes, people hammered grommets onto the belt holes, machines dyed the sides of leather straps and people stitched pieces together.

The second factory of the day was a denim finishing facility. It received jeans from a sister factory in Delhi and workers added whiskers, performed sandblasting and washed them. This facility opened only five months ago but was notable because of all the environmental features that had been designed into its construction. Solar panels lined the roof, the denim laundering process included a step where microbes helped to clean through effluent, heat and exhaust was trapped to heat water and computerized safeguards were in place to regulate electricity consumption. The factory has plans to treat all its effluent and re-use it, thereby producing almost no wastewater.

The third facility was very interesting because it further explored the world of handwork. We visited the "distribution center" to which the factory sent all its hand embroidery work. The center turned out to be the home of a mother and son who received hundreds of garments from the factory, then contracted out the embroidery work to women in the neighborhood.

Like Tuesday's centers, these women lived in a very poor area and under pretty extreme conditions. Women come to the center, pick up several garments, take them home to embroider when they have time while tending to their families, then return the pieces to the distribution center for their wages.

Going out into the community has been an eye-opening experience and I'm finding it difficult to reconcile the idea that garment production is creating opportunity with the fact that it's impossible for anyone to know with 100% certainty that no exploitation is occurring. I know that The Corporation is doing everything it can, but there seem to be so many societal and economic factors working against our good intentions.