Plastic Factory in Ninh Binh

Last Saturday I sat in traffic for four hours on my way to Ninh Binh, a beautiful land of jagged cliffs and fantastic landscapes with space shuttle structures juxtaposed against ancient mountains. I was there helping my friend take footage of a plastic bag factory, which she promised was only an hour and a half away. We were going to make an industrial film for her company, an intermediary between foreign plastic buyers and the Chinese-owned factory in Vietnam.

When we arrived, the smell of plastic was strong and the inks they used to print graphics were left in tubs that were fuming into the air. The workers were 90% women and a few men working on the maintaining the machines, the average wage being around $100 a month. All functions involving detail work, such as punching holes for handles or reinforcing bags with cardboard, were done by women.  The atmosphere, fumes everpresent, was relaxed enough. Though facemasks nor any other protective gear was used, there wasn’t too much wide-eyed intensity nor sweat inching down the cheak of the overworked proletariat. Everything seemed quite normal in the everyday Vietnamese fashion.

In one room of the factory you could see how they took recycled plastic collected from the local neighborhood and reconstituted them into plastic handles and other functional goods. The whole process took place in that one room. Recycled plastic scraps were somehow turned into plastic pellets, then poured into a machine from which plastic bag handles came. Apparently, plastics could be recycled in this was up to five times though out the lifetime of the plastic. It was all very fascinating to see in the moment.

After we were done taking footage, we rode back to Hanoi properly inebriated on plastic fumes. Back home, I heard my friends had visited two other factories, Yamaha and Hanoisimex, which are automotive and textile factories, respectively. I might have missed out, and could help but feel a little regret. It’s hard to say if I’ll ever find myself in a true factory again.