Burnaby’s Mark Angelo is at the centre of a new film highlighting the fashion industry’s harmful effects on streams and rivers around the world.
Angelo and his accompanying production crew set out to tour the world’s rivers and make a film, but the emerging story focused on pollution from the fashion industry.
“A lot of people didn’t make the connection between clothes and the environment,” Angelo told the NOW. “The worst river pollution examples I’ve seen in recent year have related to fashion.”
The film, RiverBlue, includes actor Jason Priestley as the narrator, and it premieres Oct. 1.
“As a long-time educator on the environmental side I’ve always believed everything is connected. … When you start to see toxins from an Asian textile mill showing up in the tissue of a North American polar bear, you start to realize that these are issues we should all care about.”
According to Angelo, the leather and denim industries are the worst polluters for streams and rivers, and the most toxic place on Earth is in Bangladesh, where the rivers run dead, and leather workers are exposed to huge amounts of chromium. Toxins, like lead, mercury and copper, are released directly into the waterways, Angelo added.
“This film, I think, will be for a lot of people a real eye-opener,” Angelo said. “The goal of the film is to change an industry - to make it more sustainable and more ethical.”
The film calls out companies like Gap, H&M and Nike, while calling on change from the fashion industry.
RiverBlue premieres on Saturday, Oct. 1, at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The screening is at 6:30 p.m. at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. The film has been nominated for the VIFF impact award.
For more information on the film, visit riverbluethemovie.com.
