00:00The Chittarum is shared between 14 million Indonesians who use Chittarum water every
00:19day for agriculture, for pisciculture, for washing, sometimes even unfortunately also
00:24for moisturizing, and the factories, 500 textile factories that discharge their used water.
00:29The people responsible for this pollution are hiding in our closets, it's the clothes,
00:32it's our clothes, it's what we wear every day.
00:34This is waste, it's also from several industries, and the color is red, dark red, and it's still hot.
00:52What we did is that we took the data from the Indonesian Ministry of Commerce to try
00:56to recover all the textile factories that work along the Chittarum, to locate them
01:00on a map, and try to find their drainage, where they discharge their used water.
01:05And when we couldn't find them on the road, which is often the case, we used a drone.
01:10I think I found the place because there is a big pipe that discharges water.
01:15Look, look, it's there.
01:17And so we used our drone to look for the waste water, get closer, take samples
01:24of 1 litre, 1.5 litres.
01:31To produce a t-shirt, you need an average of 40 litres of water, that includes cotton production,
01:35but it also includes the process at the factory.
01:38Once the textile arrives at the factory, it is cleaned, it is colored, we use plasticizers.
01:43And then there are pesticides, because we use insecticides on the textiles,
01:47so that the mites don't nibble the t-shirts that we will eventually find in Europe.
01:53This water, as the factory progresses, will be loaded with these different chemical products,
01:58and in the end, it will be rejected.
02:00And if the treatment is not done properly, we end up with polluted water,
02:05and water that will pollute the Chittarum.
02:06We managed to convince an industrialist to open his doors to us, a company called Gistex,
02:10which is one of the largest textile producers in Indonesia.
02:13And it's true that the moment we discover the wastewater treatment facilities,
02:19I must say that we were a little surprised, because the site manager told us that
02:23for him, it was nothing more than a finger test.
02:43So we allowed ourselves to do a little sampling at the exit of his reservoir,
02:46without him knowing it, and our results showed a true pollution,
02:50quite different from what he claimed.
03:08Have you ever seen levels this high in your career?
03:11Uh, no. No, no.
03:14How many pollutants did you find in the hair of these children?
03:17There, we went up to more than 50, 54 pollutants, different on average.
03:22In the water sampling, we found a lot of nonylphenol.
03:24Nonylphenol is a rather powerful hormonal disruptor,
03:27which will disrupt the good hormonal development of humans, but also of animals.
03:32In the hair, we found industrial pollutants, such as PCB-180.
03:37We also found insecticides from the same family as sarin gas.
03:40In the rice, we found very, very high levels of lead and chromium.
03:45And for the inhabitants, it is also necessarily a problem,
03:48and it raises questions about the long-term impact.
04:04According to the people I am in contact with, there was really a before and an after.
04:08The president has announced since that the Shitarum would be clean by 2025,
04:13which seems to me to be a very, very difficult challenge to overcome, but I ask to see.
04:17He hired the army to clean the Shitarum.
04:20He multiplied the controls, the factories that polluted too much closed.
04:24And the whistleblowers I am in contact with, those who opened their doors to me,
04:27have received more funding to be able to raise awareness,
04:31much more the Indonesians and the population on site,
04:33so that finally the Shitarum becomes the most sacred river in the country
04:37and not the most polluted in the world.
04:39We are often told that our investigations are a bit dark, that they are not very hopeful.
04:43I believe that the people we meet, these whistleblowers,
04:46who fight with their little means against industries worth 10 billion euros,
04:49who spend their days on the Shitarum with a tire to denounce such or such pollution,
04:54they are hopeful, they are really light in the dark.
04:58And I am very happy that since the broadcast of our report in Indonesia,
05:02their fight has finally been recognized to its due value,
05:04that they have received a little more funding and that they can raise awareness more of the Indonesians
05:09and certainly also raise awareness of the consumers that we are,
05:12so that we keep our clothes, our closets, with a little more critical thinking.
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