Rubber tires — a dirty business | DW Documentary

summertime is vacation time here in Germany most car owners still prefer to drive even to distant holiday destinations when it comes to road safety tires are of course of paramount importance more than 50 million are sold each year in Germany alone it's a multi-billion dollar business but where do these tires come from and under what conditions are they produced the tires of my family car are well past their prime they're getting old and are a bit brittle the need to replace them ahead of a family vacation has got me thinking about the origin and sustainability of tires on the market - stealing a family-run business is one of the biggest independent dealers in western Germany I'd like to buy a set of new summer tires and want some advice the store stocks the standard brands they're all good quality but I have a different question on my mind can I tell where a tire was produced is that possible so you just keep tuss yes made in China and Japan the Czech Republic tires are clearly produced all around the world in to see our customers interested under what conditions the tires are produced very few to be honest the customers aren't interested in sustainability how the tires are produced for us it is of course an important factor but very few customers are interested to be honest but the sales adviser is convinced that his products meet sustainability standards so I could buy any of these with a clear conscience big manufacturers place a lot of importance on sustainability so I think it would be better to stick with them because you can be sure that they are aware of environmental mental issues so I think you can buy tires with a clear conscience we want to make our own assessment so we head off for Southeast Asia Thailand is the world's biggest producer of natural rubber more than 4 million tons of it are harvested on its plantations each year over the last 30 years production here is grown by 300% Bangkok is the center of the rubber trade we're meeting journalists v intercut - who's written extensively about the industry even from the car it's clear what a big role the tire industry plays in Thailand after all it's not just natural rubber that is produced here but many tires are too they're then shipped around the world in containers but it's not easy to get a glimpse inside the business here well as the rubber industries play playing the important role to tie economy so I think the people in this industry might want to keep some secret with them it's quite a bit difficult to get information from from them our first stop is in kau kamal district south east of bangkok large amounts of rubber are grown here thanks to these contacts we gain access to one of the plantations the owner inherited the plantation from his parents ma'am in the past this area was rainforest my parents cleared the whole area and started cultivating it first they planted rice and sugarcane but later they switched to rubber the plantation begins right behind his house for the first time we see how rubber is harvested the rubber latex drips out of an incision in the bark of a tree it can be harvested in a liquid state or through the addition of vinegar as they're doing here to get the rubber to solidify and harvest it in solid pieces Bowser font employs more than 50 workers on his plantation later we will discover what kind of conditions they live in Bhau savant has just planted new rubber trees despite a glut on the market that's driven a steady drop in the price per kilo Nyang we used to earn good money with our rubber but five years ago the price suddenly plummeted now we have to say where we can to get by if the plantation owner himself is feeling the pinch what about his workers on the edge of the plantation we find their decrepit huts the workers all come from neighboring Cambodia they're willing to work for lower wages than ties couple months I work 12 hours a day five days a week sometimes more how I know the poem night has fallen on Bowser Potts plantation it's the best time to harvest rubber the Cambodians are getting ready to go to work their night shift starts at 8:00 p.m. and ends at about 5:00 in the morning with just head torches for light they slice deeper and deeper grooves into the tree trunks to keep the milky latex flowing now has been working on the plantation with her family for the past seven years the 23 year old can't read or write I earn very little here between 4,000 and 5,000 baht a month I don't know for that I have to work everyday and at least four nights hard night shifts for a mere 140 euros a month that's around half of the minimum wage in Thailand which is itself hardly generous the family always gathers at 5:00 in the morning to eat but sometimes they have to go without in the rainy season we can't work and don't get paid then we often don't have anything to eat and have to go hungry when it gets light Naz daughter heads off to school she only gets to see your mother briefly the rest of the family is going to bed they own just two mattresses shared between eight family members [Music] [Music] outside his nas brother his job today spraying herbicide he's using the extremely toxic product paraquat long outlawed in europe da feels safe wearing a mask what the 25 year old doesn't realize is that paraquat can also be absorbed through the skin and can lead to severe kidney liver and heart damage he should by no means be working without protective clothing in shorts but no one has told him that before the harvest we have to kill the grass with poisonous chemicals otherwise snakes could hide in the grass between the trees and bite us this is what it looks like before the herbicide is used and this is what it looks like afterwards the chemicals remain in the ground for months not a single worker ear is wearing protective gloves after the harvest beau Asif bought sells his rubber to the woman who controls the trade in the area a broker she dictates the price as tradition has it he has no right to negotiate [Music] [Music] walala songyang by from here we send the latex to our partner factory for processing then our rubber is sent on to many well-known firms such as Goodyear for example we asked what factory she supplies she calls to ask whether she can disclose their name but the company prefers to remain anonymous undeterred we decide to follow a truck we want to know who processes the rubber [Music] our journey ends outside the gates of the Taiwan a young rubber factory which is mainly in Chinese hands we ask for permission to film but we're immediately turned away and told in no uncertain terms that a written request is also pointless from above it's possible to get an idea of the scale of the factory that supplies the processed commodity to manufacturers worldwide then unexpectedly we do get a chance to look around a rubber factory although it's considerably smaller the owner shows us around her company also supplies Thai Huari young rubber among others and mainly processes liquid latex the workers here are Thai not Cambodian we ask whether they get the minimum wage of nine thousand baht around two hundred sixty euros I earn five thousand baht a month but when the price of rubber goes up again I might earn twenty thousand they carry on hoping for better times the minimum wage is 9000 baths but these people have never had 9,000 and months of no because we didn't play like a deli like say 5050 what we but we say we can sell like if you can't sell like 2,000 take it one person we get 1,000 as the owner so the employees are not employees but get a share of the profits it's that easy to undercut Thailand scanty minimum wage behind the factory is the factory's own rubber plantation amid the trees a ramshackle Hut not far away we meet an elderly couple collecting rubber will write BNE I mean I'm over 80 though and I've been working here for 50 years oh wait you like back then the old gentleman was the boss and the plantation was high up in the mountains how she would be [Music] Clin supa and his wife live in grinding poverty while the tire industry boasts worldwide sales of more than 1.2 billion car tires we decide to confront the big name tire manufacturers based in Thailand but Japanese multinational Bridgestone the world's biggest tire producer declines our request for an interview none of the manufacturers are willing to reveal their suppliers we try the german firm continental which has recently opened a new production plant close to the city of rio we contacted them several times before our arrival asking for an interview but most requests went unanswered just like this one [Music] continental which is based in Hanover is the world's fourth biggest tire producer and so it has a particular responsibility when it comes to determining working conditions in the sector we hear that the living conditions of people on rubber plantations in neighboring Cambodia are even worse than in Thailand so we decide to head there from the capital phenom can we travel north like in Thailand there are rubber plantations as far as the eye can see with the help of our interpreter we try to arrange a visit to a rubber processing plant we made several written requests for permission to film and while we don't get that we are allowed to watch production we do film using a hidden camera [Music] here to the natural rubber is delivered in either solid or liquid form the people running the factory tell us they supply their product to all parts of the globe in the season we have to work from 6:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night sometimes less when there's nothing to do the workers are housed on the other side of the street often the mothers fathers and their older children work together in the factory or on the firm's own plantation it's a tough life factory workers are usually better off than plantation workers here they even have their own bathroom and a kitchen of sorts we normal workers usually earn around a hundred and fifty dollars a month in the factory for a seven-day week on top of that we get this accommodation free electricity and twenty kilos of rice a month in the high season we sometimes earn two hundred and fifty dollars a month we travel on to the Ratanakiri province in north-east cambodia here many indigenous communities live together in villages and farm the land one of these villages is Kok by the ton lisanne River until recently the people here worked their fields and lived modestly but well in accordance with their own traditions but those times are over their fertile fields were practically stolen from them big international companies bought the land from the government land that had been in the community's hands for generations amid the global hunger for natural rubber the villagers fields were plowed up to plant rubber trees today the community has lost almost all its land when they rolled onto our fields with bulldozers we stood up against them but we didn't have a chance they've taken everything from us many families have nothing to eat the village chief and 65 year-old Pooh Yan show us their land here were their crops once grew we find a lunar landscape ready for planting new rubber trees [Music] the more the company took our fields and graves and now they've even stripped bare our sacred mountain the people of refused to work for these new masters on their own fields like many other villages they're demanding the return of their land but they don't have much hope in the meantime new settlements have sprung up on their fields they house women and men who have moved to the area to work on the rubber plantations they to live in desperate conditions every year the rubber harvest in Cambodia grows by six to seven percent an end to this growth is not in sight on the edge of the plantation the next field is being burned off to clear the vegetation and make space for even more rubber trees for even more rubber for car tires we've seen enough and fly back to Germany to confront the tire industry with our findings we try our luck again at Continental headquarters in Hannover in 2018 the automotive supplier had a turnover of forty four point four billion euros no one here wants to be interviewed but they do at least give a written reply to some of our questions Continental uses natural commodities conscientiously and develops promotes and implements sustainable and responsible sourcing of natural rubber across the value chain the statement continues Continental is aware of its responsibilities and aims to make an active and responsible contribution to promoting sustainably produced natural rubber Continental also refers to its code of conduct since 2011 all our suppliers have had to agree to abide by our business partner code of conduct we continue on to Frankfurt to the German rubber Manufacturers Association the wdk many tire manufacturers are among its members its headquartered in a villa in the city center bonus Engel Hodges W DK's managing director the lobby group also has a code of conduct it sounds good at first the wdk and its members recognize their social responsibility to their own company to customers and suppliers to the environment and to society the actions of the companies are guided in particular by the values of integrity and fairness this code of conduct has existed for some time now it provided the basis for this sustainability charter that stipulates that we're responsible for the people who are employed across this rubber value chain but we can't influence everything right down to the farmer if we simply tried paying more for example then it would reach the first echelon of traders but there are seven other traders beneath them so you never reach the farmer in end effect we showed Boris englehardt our footage from the rubber plantations [Music] that's shocking it's definitely shocking I can't find any excuse or explanation for that we now definitely have to look to the future long haul light continental the other market leaders Bridgestone and Michelin also don't want to give us an interview we try our luck in Hana near Frankfurt where the world's third-biggest tire manufacturer is based Goodyear but we have no success here Goodyear simply responds with a written statement Goodyear doesn't buy natural rubber from Cambodia we source less than 5% of our global requirements for natural rubber from Thailand it goes on we're committed to the responsible sourcing of raw materials including natural rubber the statement continues we offer retread tires for commercial vehicles and aircraft reducing the use of natural rubber but why does Goodyear retread the tires of commercial vehicles and planes and not the tires of private cars which make up the vast majority of vehicles we visit Germany's only big retread err for automobiles - hang house here worn down treads of tires are peeled off and replaced with new ones if we look at this tire here we can see only its surface is worn so essentially the product is disposed of when only about 20% of it is worn that's absurd in Germany there is no legal obligation to recycle tires obk Ullaeus has to source most of the old tires that he needs from France or Spain what happens to use tires in Germany there are various disposal methods but usually the tires are shredded and supplied to cement works which burn the tires for fuel that's the classic method but now because we have a surplus of old tires some cement works have stopped taking them or instead of paying for them they get paid to use them as fuel hides inside in Germany some 200,000 tons of old tires go up in smoke each year while more and more rubber plantations are being established in Southeast Asia to satisfy the hunger for rubber of course the retreading process also requires fresh rubber but about 70 to 80 percent less than is needed to produce new tires that's a tire that has been produced in exactly the same way as a new tire the production steps were identical we have to fulfill identical legal requirements we conform to international standards we have the same speed ratings these tires have to match up to new ones in every way tire retreads have an image problem as obk Ullaeus knows all too well a local authority issued a call for tenders for equipping police vehicles with winter tires and this call categorically ruled out retreads and that's even though the government always maintains that it places importance on sustainability and no one has been able to explain to me to this day what data or facts this decision was based upon we would also be interested in finding out why police in the city of Reckling Heusen decided against retread tires and here to our request for an interview was declined instead they issue a written statement on emergency call-outs our vehicles faced extreme situations police cars have to be able to cope with greater strains than normal vehicles on the road but Reckling housing police don't say why a retread wouldn't be up for the job we travel to the northern German state of schleswig-holstein to one of Germany's few independent tire testing laboratories we have an appointment with an expert beta client gone the police infecting house and say they can't use retreads because they don't meet their high specifications can that be true no we've been testing new tires for decades now if a retread is produced from a high-quality worn tire then it will match the performance of a new tire and the police and the public in general should consider the environmental and financial arguments in favor of retreads nowadays we can definitely say that modern retread plants in Europe are so advanced that their products can compete with new tires since of itis testing 15 boy - Parliament I decided to go for retreads this time and I wonder how my workshop will respond first of all the tires have to be balanced thirty thirty what does that mean basically they can be easily balanced there are some big-name brands that aren't that good I'm curious to see how they perform on the road this time I've opted for sustainability I'm also confident they're safe too and with peace of mind I set off on my family vacation [Music]

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 3,355,172

Rating: 4.8035617 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, DW documentary 2019, full documentary, documentary 2019, DW, beyond the news, latex, tires, Thailand, natural rubber, car tires, replacing tires, tyres, car tyres, replacing tyres, environment, retread, retreading, rubber

Id: -fusUxEPwsw

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019

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