Inside Bangladesh’s highly polluting billion dollar leather industry

Bangladesh tanneries prepping leather for shoes, belts, wallets and purses are dumping toxic chemicals into the Daleshwari river at a new industrial complex more than a year after the government shut them down for poisoning a different river and using child labour. (Source: AP)

A buffalo horn is seen on a pile of covered tannery waste waiting to be to processed for poultry and fish feed on the banks of the Daleshwari River in Savar, Bangladesh. (Source: AP)

"It's killing the river. The color of the water has changed," Abdus Shakur, a local resident who works as a day labourer, told AP. (Source: AP)

Turning cow hides into soft, hair-free leather can be a dirty business and in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, the former home to more than 150 tanneries, the air a year ago was so noxious with chemicals that it was repeatedly named one of the most polluted places by environmentalists. (Source: AP)

The adjacent Buriganga River, a source of drinking water for over one lakh people was considered poisoned by the industry. (Source: AP)

In April 2017, under international pressure, the government shut off power supply to the Hazaribagh tanneries, ordering them to move to a new tannery industrial complex in Savar. (Source: AP)

Macy's, Timberland and Clarks continue to get leather from tanneries in Bangladesh, AP reported. (Source: AP)

Relocating the toxic leather tanning factories from intensely polluted Hazaribagh has just moved the environmental disaster to another place. (Source: AP)