Clothing Makers in Asia Give Stark Coronavirus Warning

BBC ^

[nickcarraway]

"If our workers don't die from coronavirus, they'd die of starvation."

This is the stark assessment of how the pandemic is impacting the clothing industry from garment factory owner, Vijay Mahtaney, the chairman of Ambattur Fashion India.

In normal times, Vijay Mahtaney and his partners Amit Mahtaney and Shawn Islam employ a total of 18,000 workers in three countries - Bangladesh, India and Jordan. But the outbreak has forced them to shut down the majority of the business, with just one factory, in Dhaka, partially operational.

[Wuli]

The employers and employees need to find other work.

There is a woman in India build a whole new industry. She could take on business partners to expand.

She has invented (engineers have worked with her) a process that takes plastics that could be sent to be recycled, but often just tossed out and from them she creates a fuel - currently good enough for heating oil standards and some vehicles (tractors are named). The process essentially “cooks” the plastic, under pressure, captures gases (like methane) and uses them as fuel for the process, and produces fuel from the condensate given off in the process.

She pays individuals and collectors for the plastic, which is usually obtained from folks who usually would have just tossed it out. She’s saving landfill space and cleaning up the surrounding towns. She’s making a small profit, selling the fuel. But, without expansion she alone will not make a big dent in the mountains of plastic tossed into the environment.

When your business is dying, its time to put the work into a different one, or invent a new one.

[nickcarraway]

He sounds like a Muslim.

[Lurker]

Agreed. We can make our own clothes here again.

And screw the damned unions.

L