Hazardous, heavily polluting tanneries, with workers as young as 14, supplied leather to companies that make shoes and handbags for a host of Western brands, a nonprofit group that investigates supply chains says.
The report by New York-based Transparentem, released to The Associated Press today, didn't say leather from the tanneries ends up in American and European companies' products, only that the manufacturers of some of those goods receive it.
Some companies say they're certain the leather used to make their products was imported from outside Bangladesh, and the manufacturers concur. Still, in response to the report most brands had switched factories, banned Bangladesh leather or demanded improvements and audits.
The abuses alleged have long plagued Hazaribagh, a Dhaka neighborhood that's the hub of Bangladesh's leather industry with more than 150 tanneries.
The air is noxious with an eye-stinging rotten-egg odor, and children play on small hills of rotting hide trimmings. The Buriganga River, a source of drinking water for 180,000 people, shimmers with poisons from tannery chemical runoff, as well as other human and industrial waste.
The USD 1 billion-a-year industry was ordered to shut down and move more than 15 years ago, but deadlines have passed without consequence and fines go unpaid.
Last week, Bangladesh's High Court told authorities to stop supplying gas, water and electricity to the tanneries. Rawhide supplies have also been ordered halted.
Similar problems exist at tannery clusters in the Philippines and India.
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