Illegal leather - How the car industry is threatening the rainforest | DW Documentary
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- čas přidán 2. 05. 2024
- Brazil’s tannery industry exports products worth 1.5 billion Euros every year. Cattle meat and hides are a huge economic driver. But this business often involves the illegal destruction of the rainforest for grazing land.
"The forest is our home. And now it’s all being destroyed forever.” Wenatoa Parakanã stands outside her cabin in the dense rainforest of the Brazilian Amazonas and is close to tears. The young Parakanã woman has lived her whole life in the remote region of Apyterewa - about a day’s motorboat trip to the next small town.
But for several years now, life for Wenatoa has been changing beyond recognition. Strangers are coming to threaten her village, chop down the trees and turn her homeland into gigantic pasture lands for thousands of cattle. Over the last 20 years, an area of forest almost as large as Germany has been logged in the region - often illegally. Many researchers fear that the Amazonas has already reached its tipping point: It can no longer recover from the many fires and droughts. This could have devastating consequences for the global climate.
On a local level, only very few people dare to oppose the illegal destruction of the rainforest. After all, the animals’ meat and hides are a huge economic driver. Every year, the Brazilian tannery industry exports products valued at more than one billion Euros. These products are sold all over the world. And as the research for this film shows: some of them are also ending up in German luxury cars.
With intrepid journeys to the heart of the action, footage secretly filmed in abattoirs, interviews with insiders and the latest digital research techniques, the team retraces the production steps of this illegal leather right to its source. From the Brazilian rainforest, via shady middlemen to German car dealerships offering the latest models by BMW, Mercedes & Co. - complete with their luxurious leather interiors.
The film embarks on a journalistic quest for clues that turns into an economic crime thriller. After all, this isn’t an isolated case, it’s systematic environmental exploitation. Despite the many glossy brochures touting the carmakers’ sustainability credentials, these complex supply chains are often opaque - keeping their impact on people and the environment in the dark.
#documentary #dwdocumentary #leather #carindustry
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Journalism is an important job. They report news and create awareness.Greeting to the brave journalists.
Great journalism, an eye opener. Greetings from Finland :)
Thank you for watching and for your positive feedback!
@@DWDocumentaryGreetings 🙏 from Raleigh North Carolina 🇳🇬 🇳🇬 🇳🇬 🇳🇬 🇳🇬
Torilla tavataan ;)
Oh noooo not a fin-rand
DW, Deutsche Welle, thank you for doing such a great job, you`re the best.
Greetings.
Thank you for your work, thank your for your journalism, this world needs it as much as ever! 🙏💯
Thanks a lot for watching and for your positive feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to comment and
are glad you like our content!
An eye opener. Watching from Kenya.
This is what CZcams needs to put in everyone feeds.
Lungs of this globe is been vanishing quickly, it's heart breaking,don't breathe.
It’s a damn shame that with the wrong people with power and greed can ruin everything for everyone! I would love to help fight against these corrupt people please let me know how to do my part 🙏
start by moving to Brazil
@@ranger51262lmao
Sharing helps. Tell people that this is a thing - the abuses taking place in the Amazon are far more extensive and widespread than anyone not physically here or doing activism on this issue are aware of.
First thing to. Don't buy the stuff and if you know anyone who does, be sure to let them know about it.
Compelling and informative. A challenging problem; how do we incentivize the protection of rainforest?
Please focus in the northeast Indian states of India.Here in Assam,Manipur and in Nagaland we are loosing virgin forest to Coal mafia and Palm oil plantation as current Indian regime is hell bent in doing so called development by virtue of cutting and slashing pristine forest cover.
There should be fair deal, any country that grows forests should be paid for it, it is not fair some countries use their land for agriculture and ask other countries to keep the forests
I hope to see this too, thank you
@@Sami-Nasrlook up John D. Liu - our economic system now is based on the destruction of finite nature instead it must be based on the health of nature (which will lead to our own health). Sadly there is no foresight in extraction as our generations to come will have nothing (and this is when we realize we cannot eat money)
The thing is. We didn't tell them to burn down the forest.
It is their own greed.
This doc so educative, it exhausted everything.
Dear DW team thank you. But please don't ever go into someone's office like that. Anything could happen
just this morning I had an in-depth bilateral exchange with the cashier at the gas station
It was a monumental effort of goodwill and responsible business practice
The number reason why DW is the Number one Journal News in The world.
Greed over everything. It's a shame what's happening to the Amazon and to the indigenous people who just want to live on their land and not have it stolen from them. Thank you DW for this informative and important documentary.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.
Show some respect to those hard workers!!
i needed this today. the only thing i don't like is that i have to watch a german documentary in english because for some reason most of your documentaries are not uploaded on the german channel? lol
Human greed is killing our planet,sadly…
Don't even try to tell me this is fake news when investigative journalists put their lives on the line to research and bring us this information. They have taken a very brave first-step. The rest is up to us consumers to boycott the products and vote for politicians who will force regulations and ethical business practices onto the the corporations tearing our planet apart to maintain growing profits.
It’s not fake about deforestation, just the leather correlation is the misleading part of this article.
and the Germans and others buy it, no questions asked, because it is cheap.
They are also lied to about the source
@@Jimmy4video would it be then not up to the HONEST press and competent Journalists to inform? To me, both dont exist.
@benediktmorak4409 it's kind of weird to write that under this documentary made by a national broadcaster. Obviously they exist, DW has many great journalists as do many other news corporations, especially those that are publicly funded.
@@Jimmy4video Deutsche Welle WAS good.
The same as CNN was good when Ted Turner was still the owner.
But these days it is all more about ratings, looks,clicks and likes. And with it the calculations of advertising rates. GOOD,investigative Journalism, from the like of a Peter Scholl Latour or Dr.Hugo Portisch, to name just two that came to my mind,that is a thing of the past.
Save this planet 😢
Synthetic leather has excellent properties and doesn't require destroying historic forests.
Dude… considering the leather comes from a certified origin, think about leather (after slaughterhouse, of course) versus synthetic materials in regards of climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, particulate matter/respiratory inorganics, photochemical ozone formation, ionizing radiation impacts, acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity and abiotic resource depletion. Last and not least, which one has more fossil carbon, allergenic and carcinogenic in its total composition - the leather which is 95-99% carbon from renewable source (recycling waste of food industry = natural skin) or plastics made of crude oil or 100% non-renewable carbon? Go for it on your petroleum stuff! LMAO
The key here, lobbyists have convinced politicians, again and again. The population doesn't need to even know about it, no moral decisions are possible, capitalism, consumerism is at the wheel.
DW 🙏🏻✨🌍💚
I like your research ....
That's very sad!!!
Isn't a lot of the rainforest being cleared for raising cattle for the huge beef industry? The world's largest beef export company (JBS??) is Brazilian. The hides for leather would be a secondary product I would think.
100% agreed!!! I posted something about it today as well…
Cattle is raised for meat, leather is a sub product.
100% agreed!!! I posted something about it today as well…
The Brazil Government is a Disgrace for allowing this to happening.
Corruption at its finest.
Cars don’t use leather anymore tho.. they use plastic leather now which is mostly synthetic
Please provide Portuguese subtitles. TY.
This doc is a 100% miss. The more concerning issue surrounding leather is how its processed. 90% of leather is chromium tanned which uses many chemicals and dyes that frequently get dumped into rivers in these undeveloped countries.
Leather can be "vegetable tanned", although it actually uses wood and bark, which is an entirely natural curing method that doesnt harm the environment whatsoever.
The real issue here is how leather is processed. Thats the real environmental concern. Leather is a byproduct, its thrown out if not used. We should be making if in an environmentally friendly way.
Nailed it. Unless we all go vegan, it'd be wasteful to not use it.
Far more oversight is indeed needed in developing countries where poverty often makes for short term decisions, at the expense of the environment.. 😢
So, let's cut down every forest left in the world so we can raise catle. What a nonsense!
You can raise a cow to maturity in 2 years. Now, go try and regrow a forest like Amazon and see how long it will take you.
You 100% failed to understand what this documentary is about.
The Amazon forest is being CUT down and CLEARED, at sizes equivalent to 5 000 soccer fields DAILY, to raise cattle. Illegally and violently displacing endogenous communities in the process. Using bulldozers and guns NOT chromium.
You are welcome.
You are creating rule by exception, the olive oil industry can also dump tons of phenols into rivers if they are not responsible and you still eat olive oil because most of them are responsible with wasting water, same goes for the paper industry and a lot of others… just like tanneries. With the amount of certifications required by the automotive industry, it’s likely impossible that a leather supplier does what you said. Research about Zeolite tanning… you might find something interesting about new technologies.
Good job DW
Navigating of meeting the basic need of local communities and ensuring that the activities are sustainable is not easy, which is not addressed in this documentary
Cars cannot be sustainable at the rate we currently use them.
Global law should force all humans to have to drive a car until engine dies.
My part since the beginning of this year is to completely stop eating beef. I even see it in the supermarket here in Germany, saying that it comes from South America... the mere fact that it has travelled so far disgusts me. Some goes for bananas... i only buy the reduced ones before they are thrown away.
8:14 Same we see in Germany but that is "fine"
same in England too; so much farmland
Evil and corruption reigns supreme, especially in the "west". It's just done in a more sofisticated way and through others, such as in this case too.
The research is superb but I think that's not the source of the problems. The government have to regulate and standardize the activities in both Amazon and Automobile industries.
People are greedy 😢
BUT all carmakers are using fake vinyl leatherette these days. real leather is fading fast !!
Car manufacturers (especially German car manufacturers) have been looking for a cheap excuse to replace real leather, first with lower quality plastic-covered leatheret, and finally with shody vinyl (aka: "vegan leather") for years. Ever since 2016 real, thick, durable leather has disappeared but for the most expensive models. And after 2022, any real leather is scarce.
Meanwhile they STILL charging 4,000-7,000€ for "leather interior"! And you know what happens to the millions of cow hides from the meat industry? They burn them as garbage!
Absolutely true! If the world stops consuming leather right now, there will be around 1.7 billion pounds of biomass thrown into a landfill or even being incinerated - both terrible options for the environment. The slaughter of animals will not stop because of the leather or even soap, personal hygiene, or cosmetics industry. This is due to the simple fact that cows are essentially raised for the food industry and when they are slaughtered, one of the WASTE products (animal skins) is RECYCLED INTO LEATHER. This means if you STOP CONSUMING LEATHER of any type right now, you WILL NOT SOLVE THE AMAZON PROBLEM, but instead, you will create an environmental disaster in regards of ground contamination and greenhouses gases emissions.
Scotland Sharing 🥃📡🥃
I only have about 20 year remaining here. FTW
No children?
Groeing a full view for leather is crazy business
So who are the customers??
Wealthy greedy evil people
Thank you to all brave and honest journalists. DANKESCHÖN zur DW Docu auch. I love to watch your documentaries. “Money makes the world good round. And….”For the LOVE OF MONEY is the ROOT of all evil.” Who loves the money ( money is lifeless ) it’s obviously man. It’s all in Der Heilige Bibel
So this multi international company is also play big role why people in amazon keep doing deforestation
"The Word For World Is Forest" by Urusala K. Leguin - is recommended reading from this.
Need improvement without polluting air and water 💧
Powerful sides have the last talk .
Human is greed
5:22 Just an idea! Would the people growing lab meat, be able to implement some of the techniques used to grow transplant skin from circumcision, to grow "sustainable leather " ?!
Another eye opening Documentary. Watching this tragedy it only made me think what disgraceful and inhuman things are happening in Bolivia. (An archipelago of corrupt and dark kingdoms)
I hope you could investigate about the use of MERCURY in the gold industry in my country. You will encounter the same treat of Brazil Authorities and companies. (Unused emails, everything by letters, unfulfilled promises and indiferent authorities)
Bolivia has an obsolete environmental law, 1333. and various regulatory degreees. (on a base of the year of 1995). THEY know that, they just don't care. A centennial impune state.
There are now some news of mercury afectation over indigenous people through river water. but no information about. the consequences in cities. or sanctions whatsoever.
Driven by Greedy People 😢😢
Leather is a terrible material for car seats, cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
2 thousand hectares per day? Fake.
Very soon when everything natural is destroyed because of greed, let's see how all the riches in the world is going to help us. I guess everyone will want to trade everything of value just to see one last day.
Thank God my car has no leather seat 😂 im a cheapskate that’s why.. being a cheapskate is better for the environment 👍
If you were a true cheapskate, you would have gotten a bicycle 🚲😁
Illegal deforestation is obviously lame, but folks don't raise cattle for the hides. Meat is 90%+ of the value in cattle. Therefore, leather car seats aren't causing deforestation.
100% agreed!!! I posted something about it today as well…
Meat...how low can you go....hear the cattle cry...death row.. !!!
👍👍👍
Don't worry all have ending when time comes.
LV ,gucci leather
Same goes for the import of guns to countries in Africa, the Caribbean & South America. The english were the people who implemented borders all over Africa breaking it up to cause division.
Forest can grow in Europe too, just get rid of the cows and the cash crops and plant trees
Amen/
👍🎁
Do as me keep your old car essence and use a bike most of the time.
We need to change our behaviour not to use other thing to carry on to pollute as we do.
Please make documentary on Nagaland the forgotten story post independence India. The fake border, the Massacre of Naga people by the government in 1960s etc.
What about cow leather? I like beef, the skins can go to the luxury car interiors. Everyone is happy.
Support sustainable agriculture producers like me in Bulgaria i create ecosystems that support wildlife and diversity while raising animals free range sustainably
Какво по-точно правиш?
@@Urgleflogue i create ecosystems like food forests with fishponds and dams that collect and store the rainwater
@@Byzantion I see. Can I have more information on whereabouts of these ecosystems? Names, please?
@@Urglefloguecurrently doing projects in Vietnam and in Bulgaria in Strandja... but i will buy some land close to Sofia too so i can sell directly from the farm delivered to my customers
@@Byzantion Голяма част от Странджа е резерват ако не се лъжа, къде работиш там?
The story told in AVATAR
The moral of the story is: if you want a car with natural leather buy a Chinese car
Now Germany should stop manufacturing cars .
Vinyl seats
I mean, i watched like a hundred docs like this and things keep being the same. What's the point? Everyone in EU and all over the world is the same. You can make a thousand more it won't make a difference.
United states here, US has tons of beef, pork, and chicken. Delicious beef jerky and slim jim come from America. Peaches, peanuts, corn, strawberry, raspberry, squash, alcohol, and tobacco are local US agriculture products.
Pricey
Uh...ok?
@@MattTee1975 There is alcohol store on almost every street corner. That's what I would do, make the alcohol legally.
Look, I don't wanna be rude, but can someone explain to me how someone gets fat working at an illegal mine?
Food that lack nutrition due to adding artificial byproducts.
Wow, another Western introspective DW documentary.
Blame Bolsonaro, take him to court, lock him up.
We like comfort and nice stuff to soften the awfulness of life . They're going to use up the forest and nothing will stop them . Enjoy the good things and do not worry
But The whole western nations cut down forest for the development of their countries.
So for the west to preach to poor countries is double standard.
Yeah! Profit over lives, environmental sustainability, habitat, social common sense etc. Profit over everything ! The shareholder party will end soon enough though. They may get skinned themselves in the process of system collapse, along with politicians, CEO's, war mongers etc. Tell us something we don't know.
send some indian cow protector there..surely all cattle business will stop immediately
And what did you eat in your lunch?
And...what does it change? Everyone knew it.
I think sense we started to enjoy cooking with oil we have more wildfires and also volcanoes but again need for clean drinking water is real and it takes energy to achieve that result so question would be around business ethics if I see 12 guys sharing 1.5 liters of dirty drinking water or people drinking alcohol and not using alcohol stoves to clean water because it's our own waste we can't mix into water shit and urine and we are only species on planet who are able to take care of wildlife and worry about their drinking water same carefully as we worry about ours.
But Brazil is allowing this.... so there must be political greed too. That's the angle to consider
#Wespe
💤
Overpopulation = more need for goods til earth looks like mars
Mars is the future.
I'm confused about why the general public finds it acceptable to dictate the agricultural practices of the developing world. What are they supposed to do, sell air? Jungle tours? Maybe magic mushrooms?
Whats new Its all about Money Money Money 🤑
Why the bullshiter has a new car and I dont have?
What has he more than I?
Exactly, BMW is just a"status symbol." ........Over priced piece of luxury shxt. Parts very expensive, exorbitant labor cost. And they don't retain their value..............so if you have a lot of $$$ to burn, and you wanna look good, get yourself one. And that goes for Mercedes too.
Their older vehicles were better made.
Leather is a by product of the meat industry. It's MORE sustainable to use the leather after a cow's been slaughtered in a meaningful way than to leave it to rot while spending resources to make 'vegan' leather because people want to be 'sustainable'. It literally doesn't make any sense. This video is barking up the wrong tree. Go after the beef industry if you want, but it's absurd to think that farmers raise up cows primarily to sell leather rather than meat.
Your 100% right about leather being a byproduct of meat. However, most people dont realize the "leather" in their cars is a synthetic, man made material rather then true leather.
Moreover, high end manufacturers depend on reliably high quality leather. They dont buy some here, some there, etc. There reputation relies on consistency so 1 single leather supplier is used.
The greatest part is that native Americans, widely considered to be environmentally conscious, resourceful, and efficient, used leather heavily because.........after killing an animal it's wasteful to not use the hide.
Think about how demand for leather helps to incentivize cattle farming by making it more lucrative. Without such a demand for cattle products, the profitability of cattle farming would surely be less. Yes leather is a product but you argue as if it's just a biproduct that would be otherwise thrown away. It's one of the reasons why cattle are farmed in the first place.
@@pauliewalnuts240Both great comments. "The truth" is probably somewhere in between. (;
Leather processing is one of the most stinky environment damaging industries.
@@fraxizztv6433 perhaps not the "truth", but certainly the "solution"
Isn't the human population declining?
oh wow
Well. Germany has enough cows and beef eaters. This is very sus. This video must be sponsored by Americans.
Civilization has entered late-stage capitalism.
Capitalism is an insatiable hunger, one which is inherently incapable of expressing the concept of "enough" - it's a system that must chronically engorge (without pause).
Poverty is the mother of necessity; the comfort of the rich, depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.
the Alchemist
-Ø1
No offense intended, but maybe you should watch this 42 minute documentary, first - rather than posting your cut-and-paste doomsday comment the minute it premieres.
Otherwise, you make it obvious you're an AI SPAM account. 🙄
Best wishes from Vermont 🍁
@@TheStockwell
God(s)/Religion(s) = Fiction = Culture = Tribalism = Ignorance.
Maybe you'll be assigned to changing Lord Trumps diapers once he's officially crowned?
The Illusion of Agency:
Why would randomness produce Logic?
A singular Universe formed logically from illogical Nothingness?
Never conflate freedoms within a construct for free-will.
In the video game Tetris players have freedom to manipulate shapes within allotted parameters. The player does not have agency to change the mechanisms within the game construct; one cannot transform into Master Chief and play Halo from within Tetris.
Within our Universe, Nature has permitted freedoms within our predefined construct, not Agency. One cannot imagine themselves transforming into a literal Superman, and actually becoming one.
The game designer sets the rules and functions, not the players.
Starship Determinism (a hypothetical scenario):
As an act of desperation Earth develops a starship capable of reaching the nearest habitable world beyond our solar system.
Without light-speed travel capabilities, the journey will require 700 years before their destination is reached by the crew.
From the initial several hundred crew members; generations will be born into and die aboard Starship Determinism.
Considering conditions aboard such a limited space, with finite offerings, both in terms of occupations and personal options (food, sex, shelter, recreation) - how much 'free will' can be exercised by those generations born into their limited paradigm?
How many subsequent generations after the initial crew would have opted for life within a cramped vessel?
Earth is a deterministic cosmic vessel, following a predetermined trajectory through space - except on a significantly larger scale.
the Alchemist
-Ø1
Everything that causes suffering, environmental degradation, etc.. can be associated to one or more of the seven sociopathic pillars of capitalism.
What a good comment right there, I agree with you absolutely correct ...GBYA.
@@TheStockwell Don't feed the idiot troll.
What has been the result of the investigation and what government action has been taken to eliminate this illegal activity. President Lula ????
The industry can produce artificial leather. They dont. Why not.