Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio. It's the big take. I'm
Speaker 1: West Gusova today. Aluminum's long, dirty trip from the Amazon
Speaker 1: to the US. The Ford F one fifty pickup truck
Speaker 1: is the best selling vehicle in the US and has
Speaker 1: been for decades, and when the company unveiled the all
Speaker 1: electric version, called the Lightning, it was an immediate hit
Speaker 1: and sold out. One advantage of electric over gasoline powered
Speaker 1: vehicles is, of course, that the motor is cleaner and
Speaker 1: causes less pollution. That's not always the case, though, when
Speaker 1: it comes to other parts on the vehicle. Like all
Speaker 1: cars and trucks, the F one fifty Lightning is made
Speaker 1: with a lot of aluminum, hundreds of pounds of it,
Speaker 1: and some key parts are made with aluminum that would
Speaker 1: be hard to call environmentally friendly. Bloomberg Senior correspondents Sheridan
Speaker 1: Prasso in Washington and Jessica Brice in Sao Paulo, Brazil
Speaker 1: trace some aluminum parts on the F one fifty ev
Speaker 1: back through a complex supply chain to the heart of
Speaker 1: the Amazon. In Brazil, thousands of residents are now suing
Speaker 1: a refiner that operates there. They claim the aluminum industry
Speaker 1: has made their water undrinkable, that it's harmed the Amazon's
Speaker 1: fragile ecosystem, and it's made them sick. Sheridan and Jessica
Speaker 1: are here now to tell us what they found and
Speaker 1: how Ford has responded. Sheridan, what first made you want
Speaker 1: to look into this story? So sometime last year I
Speaker 1: heard about a lawsuit against this company called Norse Hydro.
Speaker 1: It's a Norwegian company. It has offices around the world.
Speaker 1: It has a refinery for alumina in Brazil in the
Speaker 1: Amazon region, and the people who live around it file
Speaker 1: the class action lawsuit. The suit represents eleven thousand people
Speaker 1: who live around the refinery. They are suing the company
Speaker 1: for causing environmental damage and affecting the health of the community.
Speaker 1: That is what they claim in the suit. The company
Speaker 1: denies these claims and says it's operations meet resilient laws
Speaker 1: and environmental requirements. Sheridan, let me ask you, because we're
Speaker 1: going to hear a number of terms here, what is
Speaker 1: the difference between alumina and aluminum? How is aluminum actually mate?
Speaker 1: So what happens is there's a rock in the ground
Speaker 1: called box sit that is red colored, and mining companies
Speaker 1: take it out of the ground, They grind it all
Speaker 1: up into a powder and dry it out and send
Speaker 1: it for processing at an alumina refinery. The refinery turns
Speaker 1: that red box sit into a white powder called alumina.
Speaker 1: It separates the red and leaves just the white. That
Speaker 1: white powder is there and what is used for the
Speaker 1: smelting process to turn it into aluminum. And that very complicated,
Speaker 1: kind of messy, dirty process is at the heart of
Speaker 1: these lawsuits and the complaints that people have about the
Speaker 1: environment and their own health. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: people both at the site of the mine itself that's
Speaker 1: located in the center of the Amazon, in a national
Speaker 1: forest area, in fact, in the rainforest, and I also
Speaker 1: talk to the people who live around the alumina refinery
Speaker 1: down at the end of the Amazon River. And in
Speaker 1: both of those places people cited environmental damage and damage
Speaker 1: to their health as a result of these processes. Jessica,
Speaker 1: This alumina, which comes from Brazil winds up in many
Speaker 1: different products around the world. Is that right? It does.
Speaker 1: Some of the aluminum is process into aluminum here in Brazil,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it goes to North America and Europe.
Speaker 1: Generally the aerospace industry, the automotive industry, and the beverage
Speaker 1: industry use a lot of this alumina in aluminum, and
Speaker 1: what we focused on is how this aluminum ends up
Speaker 1: in the four AD F one fifty. And the reason
Speaker 1: we chose the F one fifty is because when Ford
Speaker 1: announced that they were making the all electric F one
Speaker 1: fifty EV Lightning last year, a lot of the auto
Speaker 1: parts companies, which don't normally reveal who their customers are
Speaker 1: supply chains tend to be a black box, announced that
Speaker 1: they are supplying parts to the F one fifty and
Speaker 1: we didn't know that information previously. So what that allowed
Speaker 1: us to do is to be able to trace all
Speaker 1: of those aluminum parts suppliers. If you look backwards, goes
Speaker 1: back to Canada where the aluminum is smelted from the
Speaker 1: alumina that comes from Brazil, and ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: alumina that Canada uses to turn into aluminum comes from
Speaker 1: this region of the Amazon. But another reason that we
Speaker 1: chose the F one fifty to focus on is because
Speaker 1: when Ford announced their electric vehicle, they said this is
Speaker 1: the truck of the future, and they asked, can a
Speaker 1: truck could change everything? And the key to transitioning, as
Speaker 1: the Bid administration is pushing, the key to transitioning to
Speaker 1: a more environmental future is getting Middle America, the rest
Speaker 1: of America, not just people who buy Tuzla's in California
Speaker 1: or the East Coast, but people who drive pickup trucks.
Speaker 1: If you can convince these people that electric vehicles are
Speaker 1: the future that changes everything. And so that's why we
Speaker 1: chose Ford because it's iconic. It's the best selling pickup
Speaker 1: truck in America and has been for decades. Once we
Speaker 1: started tracing it, it turned out that the aluminum that
Speaker 1: is made from this alumina from this box side in
Speaker 1: the Amazon is in the exterior panels of the F
Speaker 1: one fifty. It's in something called a rocker that runs
Speaker 1: from the front door to the back door underneath the doors.
Speaker 1: It's in other parts, including the tubing for the frame
Speaker 1: on the interior of the accab. It's very, very hard
Speaker 1: to find any aluminum in this supply chain that is
Speaker 1: not touching the Amazon. Jessica. Long before this aluminum is
Speaker 1: used in parts for the four D F one fifty Lightning,
Speaker 1: it has its origins deep in the Amazon. Can you
Speaker 1: explain the start of this process, The very beginning of
Speaker 1: this supply chain is in the heart of the Amazon,
Speaker 1: at a mine called MRN. That mine's been operating for decades,
Speaker 1: and when it originally started operating, the emphasis on environmental
Speaker 1: protection wasn't as great. They went out there and they
Speaker 1: polluted a lot of the water, they dumped a lot
Speaker 1: of the waste. Communities they are still suffering from that.
Speaker 1: MRN now says that they have an open dialogue with
Speaker 1: a lot of the folks who live around in these communities.
Speaker 1: They say they test the water to make sure that
Speaker 1: the pollution is not happening. But they are still located
Speaker 1: in the middle of a nationally protected forest, and some
Speaker 1: of the expansion that they want to do now, they
Speaker 1: want to expand quite dramatically into that forest. It overlaps
Speaker 1: with a protected area known as a kilombola, which is
Speaker 1: land that's been set aside for descendants of formerly enslaved people.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that it's in the middle of a
Speaker 1: national rainforest in the Amazon, it's going to have to
Speaker 1: DeForest a lot of that land in order to get
Speaker 1: to that box side. If you talk to MRN, their
Speaker 1: executives say that there's a real difference in perception about
Speaker 1: what the local communities say is happening to them and
Speaker 1: what the mine says it's actually doing. The mining company
Speaker 1: studies the water and sends those audies to the environmental
Speaker 1: regulator every year. We weren't able to get that data,
Speaker 1: but they say that those studies show that the water
Speaker 1: is okay for those folks. However, the perception of the
Speaker 1: communities is that it's not at all okay. And what
Speaker 1: we're really talking about here is that the lack of
Speaker 1: law in Brazil to protect these communities and to prevent
Speaker 1: this sort of pollution from happening, or monitoring it or
Speaker 1: catching it. It's just not there. Amaran is operating within
Speaker 1: the laws of Brazil. It's just that the laws are
Speaker 1: incredibly weak, Sheridan. We think of the Amazon is being
Speaker 1: wild and remote, but in fact, the area around this
Speaker 1: mine has a lot of people living around it. Is
Speaker 1: that right. The mine is located in such a huge
Speaker 1: area that is surrounded by water on at least three
Speaker 1: sides of it. Communities are dotted all along the area
Speaker 1: where the mine is located. It's important to note and
Speaker 1: when I went to the mine and talk to the
Speaker 1: people all along the periphery. What they say is the
Speaker 1: mine itself is located on a plateau, it's higher elevation,
Speaker 1: and the river is below. So what happens is rain water,
Speaker 1: and just kind of the natural process of ecosystems means
Speaker 1: that the waste that's generated, even if done in the
Speaker 1: most ecologically sound way possible, still flows down to their communities.
Speaker 1: And so what they told me was that because of
Speaker 1: this runoff problem from the plateau and because of the
Speaker 1: damage that had been done over the decades, they are
Speaker 1: facing issues, including the loss of their fish in the
Speaker 1: water that they relied on for their livelihood. They can't
Speaker 1: drink the water any longer. If they bathe in it,
Speaker 1: their skin gets itchy. In certain seasons around a lake
Speaker 1: that mr and filled up with mine tailings in the eighties,
Speaker 1: the mind tailings are still there, and in the dry season,
Speaker 1: the lake drives up red mud is visible. Fish nearby
Speaker 1: turn red. If they eat those fish, they get sick. Sheridan,
Speaker 1: you spoke to one woman who lives along the Amazon
Speaker 1: and has been affected by this. I spoke to Maria
Speaker 1: Delmo do Santos, who lives on the edge of Batata
Speaker 1: Lake where Mran had dumped their mining waste back in
Speaker 1: the eighties. It's still affecting their lives profoundly every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the water becomes like this colored, all red, full of bubbles.
Speaker 1: It gets dirty like mud. Really, when it comes and dries,
Speaker 1: it's like mud. You can't see anything at the bottom.
Speaker 1: Even our feet when we dip them in, we can't
Speaker 1: see anything. It's like mud, half white, half red. It's
Speaker 1: worse if we dip our fit in Sheridan. You also
Speaker 1: ask this same woman whether she thinks the water will
Speaker 1: ever get cleaned up. Now, senior to ground, you don't, no, no,
Speaker 1: because to go in this lake is very big, and
Speaker 1: there's no way to clean it unless Jesus came down
Speaker 1: and said he was going to clean it, because he
Speaker 1: has the power to do so. But I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anyone's machine that could clean it. The book seat
Speaker 1: is a lot so much. These are communities, and this
Speaker 1: is a region that's just extremely remote. It is very
Speaker 1: difficult to get there. And these communities are traditional communities
Speaker 1: that still live very much by you know, fishing and
Speaker 1: what they can gather, what they can hunt. Any sort
Speaker 1: of pollution or any threat to that is a threat
Speaker 1: to their their livelihoods. They don't have options. There aren't
Speaker 1: roads to these areas. They don't have options to go
Speaker 1: out and get other supplies or help or other water.
Speaker 1: When I asked people living around the mine how profoundly
Speaker 1: they are affected by the pollution, it became clear that
Speaker 1: it's become even a part of their identity. One of them,
Speaker 1: Haimundo da Silva, who's seventy nine years old, started singing
Speaker 1: a song that he wrote about witnessing these changes over
Speaker 1: his lifetime. Doe o ma fisawaking game for Ja god
Speaker 1: ista luisa dasuja da boshitaki vanda mean data. So this
Speaker 1: mine MRN pulls up the box site and what happens
Speaker 1: from there? They run it along a railway that goes
Speaker 1: to a port that is along a tributary of the
Speaker 1: Amazon River. At that port, they loaded onto ships, big
Speaker 1: hulking container ships, and they fill the holds of those
Speaker 1: ships with powdered box site that's been ground up, and
Speaker 1: they take it eight hundred miles down the Amazon River
Speaker 1: to where the Amazon empties into the Atlantic Ocean, which
Speaker 1: is where the refinery is located. And Sheridan, you travel
Speaker 1: down the Amazon behind one of these boats, is that right?
Speaker 1: What did you find as we went down the Amazon River.
Speaker 1: It's just an incredibly beautiful landscape, of course, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, in infinite shades of green and missionary churches
Speaker 1: all dotting along the sides, and then right in the
Speaker 1: middle these big, hulking container ships with tons of box
Speaker 1: site heading towards the refinery. There's a real disequilibrium between
Speaker 1: the beautiful nature and the actual processes of getting this
Speaker 1: box site out of the middle of the Amazon. It
Speaker 1: skirts the equator and then comes back around to the refinery,
Speaker 1: which is located right at the heart of where the
Speaker 1: Amazon meets the Atlantic Ocean. Jessica and Sheridan, please stay
Speaker 1: with me. Our conversation continues after the break, Jessica. Once
Speaker 1: those giant container ships emerge from the river and reach
Speaker 1: the refinery, what happens the next So the box side
Speaker 1: is unloaded at a couple refineries that are there. There's
Speaker 1: the Alu Norte refiner, which is the one that we
Speaker 1: focused on. The box SIT's unloaded broad into that refinery
Speaker 1: where it's turned into aluminum. Just a note here for
Speaker 1: a second, we're saying Norse, Chidro and Alu Norte, but
Speaker 1: these names are also sometimes pronounced Norsehedro and Alu nor Sheridan.
Speaker 1: Just as people complain about health and environmental problems as
Speaker 1: a result of the mining of this box site, people
Speaker 1: who live around the refinery also say that that process
Speaker 1: makes them sick. The lawsuit representing eleven thousand people who
Speaker 1: live in that community says that because of many, many
Speaker 1: years of environmental pollution that they say is caused by
Speaker 1: the refinery, they suffer terrible health problems, including hair loss
Speaker 1: and neurological problems. People report birth defects, including babies being
Speaker 1: born with their intestines outside their bodies. They say they
Speaker 1: have cancer and higher mortality than other communities. Studies of
Speaker 1: the lead and aluminum content in these people's bodies shows
Speaker 1: levels that are far far higher than what is allowed
Speaker 1: for normal states of health. The water is not drinkable
Speaker 1: around the refinery, and in fact North Chidro provides free
Speaker 1: water to the community because the water can't be drunk.
Speaker 1: Sharedon you spoke with Alunarte, What did they say about
Speaker 1: the things you're describing? So Alanorte and its owner Norse Hidro,
Speaker 1: deny any and all environmental pollution say they're operating completely
Speaker 1: within Brazilian standards and that there is zero effect from
Speaker 1: them in the community. I suppose now that is why
Speaker 1: this lawsuit seeks to sort out. So the Brazilian lawyer
Speaker 1: who's bringing the case had tried five times already to
Speaker 1: sue Alanorte and its owner, nors Hydro iNTS in Brazil,
Speaker 1: did not make any progress on those cases. Those are
Speaker 1: all still pending. Then he teamed up with a global
Speaker 1: law firm and brought the case in the Netherlands. So
Speaker 1: that case is in Rotterdam District Court. Now the court
Speaker 1: ruled that they do have jurisdiction over what's going on
Speaker 1: in Brazil because Norse Hidro has subsidiaries and operations in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands. So that case is scheduled to be heard
Speaker 1: sometime in the coming months. Essica, you said just a
Speaker 1: minute ago that Alu Norte and MRN operate within Brazilian law.
Speaker 1: How is it that the Brazilian government allows this to happen.
Speaker 1: Why would they not want to protect the Amazon, which
Speaker 1: is sort of the beating heart of Brazil. It comes
Speaker 1: down to the commodities market. I mean, Brazil is a
Speaker 1: commodities powerhouse, so when you're talking about Amazon deforestation. The
Speaker 1: government is not doing their own studies of this water,
Speaker 1: and they're not doing their own studies of the health effects.
Speaker 1: Do you expect that there will be closer scrutiny of
Speaker 1: this going forward? I expect there to be closer scrutiny
Speaker 1: of environmental damage going forward. The Environmental Regulator, the head
Speaker 1: count there and the resources that they have access to
Speaker 1: was gutted. And that wasn't just under the administration of
Speaker 1: former President jam Bolsonado. Of course he accelerated it, but
Speaker 1: that started years ago, years and years ago, because Brazil
Speaker 1: wasn't a very serious recession embroiled in a very serious
Speaker 1: corruption scandal. So this is more than a decade in
Speaker 1: the making in which the environmental regulator has no teeth whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So the environmental agency it acknowledges that it can't test
Speaker 1: water quality around the MRN mine, but it does do inspections,
Speaker 1: and over the past two decades it's fined MRN twenty
Speaker 1: nine infractions totaling six point six million dollars, and they
Speaker 1: say that they've only received ten percent of that amount.
Speaker 1: I would like to give an example of the difference
Speaker 1: between what's going on on the ground and the environmental regulation.
Speaker 1: North Chidro invited me into Elinorte, gave me a tour
Speaker 1: with a hard hat and a protective equipment and everything,
Speaker 1: and showed me all of their procedures for how they
Speaker 1: purify water and that they are a good environmental storage.
Speaker 1: That's what they told me. During that visit. I asked
Speaker 1: them about the emissions from the refinery. Eleanorte burns coal
Speaker 1: every day in the morning, at dawn and the evening
Speaker 1: at dusk. People say, and you can see this visibly,
Speaker 1: that there are emissions, big clouds plumes that come out
Speaker 1: of the refinery. They call it smoke, and they say
Speaker 1: that that makes them choke, cough, and it feels like
Speaker 1: pepper in their throats. I asked Eleanorte about this, and
Speaker 1: what they said is it's just steam, it's just water vapor.
Speaker 1: And I pressed them and said, but you know, people
Speaker 1: say it's making them cough and choke, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: all of our emissions meet environmental standards. So I went
Speaker 1: back to North Hydro's annual report. In the report, it
Speaker 1: shows that burning coal from the Eleanorte refinery emits a
Speaker 1: large amount of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and their
Speaker 1: co two emissions are and I calculated this the equivalent
Speaker 1: of what Iceland produces in an entire year, and so
Speaker 1: when they say we're following the law, they're correct. Correct.
Speaker 1: So it's important to note that Alo Norte is not
Speaker 1: the only industrial factory in the Bacadena area. It's an
Speaker 1: industrial hub in the north of Brazil. And even at
Speaker 1: Ali Norte itself, there were a lot of accidents and
Speaker 1: spills that occurred before North Kidro took over the refinery.
Speaker 1: Now the box side has been turned into alumina and
Speaker 1: it begins another long journey. It's loaded onto ships at
Speaker 1: the refineries in Brazil and then it goes to at
Speaker 1: least the part that ends up in the US supply chain.
Speaker 1: It goes up to Quebec, and in Quebec there are refineries.
Speaker 1: They are owned by Rio Tinto and by Alcoa. Those
Speaker 1: refineries turned the alumina into aluminum. That aluminum is what
Speaker 1: comes back into the United States and turns into all
Speaker 1: of the parts. What do those smelters have to say
Speaker 1: about the source of the alumina that they're getting. The
Speaker 1: two companies that own the aluminum smelters in Quebec, and
Speaker 1: they are multiple smelters owned by these two companies. They
Speaker 1: have or have had ownership stakes in MRN mine and
Speaker 1: the refineries that make the alumina both, so they know
Speaker 1: exactly the whole supply chain because they're part of the
Speaker 1: producers of it in the first place. Secondly, when you
Speaker 1: ask them about it, what they say is everybody along
Speaker 1: the whole process says, we certify our standards. Everything is
Speaker 1: certified by the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative and everybody is required
Speaker 1: to sign supply chain code of conduct agreements. The problem
Speaker 1: with the certification process is, according to Human Rights Watch,
Speaker 1: which has challenged it, is that it's not rigorous enough.
Speaker 1: It's a box ticking exercise in some cases, which just
Speaker 1: relies on what the company has to say. And Norse
Speaker 1: Chidro has a very clear point of view that they
Speaker 1: don't cause any environmental damage at all whatsoever in the Amazon.
Speaker 1: That's what they say, and that's what the certifiers of
Speaker 1: this aluminum supply chain here. What they say also is
Speaker 1: that they're relying to some degree on other sources. But
Speaker 1: according to Human Rights Watch and others who criticize this process,
Speaker 1: it's not thorough enough. And yet from the beginning of
Speaker 1: the supply chain all the way to the end, each
Speaker 1: of the points along the way can claim that they
Speaker 1: are following the law and everything that they're doing is
Speaker 1: legal and it is. Both the MR and mine and
Speaker 1: the elin Orte refinery are certified as meeting environmental standards.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, Sheridan. What did you Norris Kidro
Speaker 1: say when you ask them about your reporting? When I
Speaker 1: first looked to make the links between the lawsuit in
Speaker 1: Brazil against nors Kidro and the fact that they said
Speaker 1: in an announcement that they make a part for the
Speaker 1: F one fifty ev, I went to Brazil, did all
Speaker 1: of the reporting around the refinery and asked Norse Chidro
Speaker 1: about the connection, and what they said was, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we don't source from Brazil for the part that we
Speaker 1: make for FORD. So I thought, how is it then
Speaker 1: that they're getting the aluminum in that case? So I
Speaker 1: started digging through shipping records and what I was able
Speaker 1: to do is trace the chain from the aluminary refinery
Speaker 1: in Brazil to Quebec where it has turned into aluminum
Speaker 1: and then comes back shipped back to the United States
Speaker 1: using US import customs records and by saying that we
Speaker 1: don't source from Brazil to our US factory, what they
Speaker 1: emitted from that statement was that it goes via Canada.
Speaker 1: Once I've found all of the aluminum smelters in Canada
Speaker 1: are using this very same aluminum from the Elinorche refinery,
Speaker 1: I was able to trace it to all of the
Speaker 1: aluminum in the F one fifty, at least what's visible
Speaker 1: on the exterior. After I went back to them and
Speaker 1: said I have found your shipping records that show that
Speaker 1: you are making the aluminum in Canada and then bringing
Speaker 1: it to the US, they confirmed that that was correct.
Speaker 1: Having studied a lot of different supply chains, commodity supply chains,
Speaker 1: this is a common practice in the industry, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about beef production, you're talking about metals production. A
Speaker 1: lot of companies when they say in their marketing campaigns
Speaker 1: that we are responsibly sourcing our raw materials, they're only
Speaker 1: t one step back. All commodities chains have several steps back.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very long, complicated process that extends
Speaker 1: to a halfway across the world, and so it feels
Speaker 1: very disingenuous when you say, we're responsibly sourced, but you're
Speaker 1: only looking at your direct supplier. You also went to Ford.
Speaker 1: What did they say about your reporting on the source
Speaker 1: of aluminum used in their vehicles? So at first Ford
Speaker 1: was very skeptical and they thought that their supply chain
Speaker 1: doesn't extend back to Brazil. When I presented them the
Speaker 1: evidence that it does via Canada, they took it very
Speaker 1: seriously and they issued a statement that said we are
Speaker 1: committed to responsible sourcing that respects human rights in a
Speaker 1: clean environment, and we are now looking into these allegations
Speaker 1: as a result of your inquiry. Do you anticipate that
Speaker 1: they will change the source of aluminum for their trucks.
Speaker 1: The trouble with changing your source of aluminum is that
Speaker 1: there really isn't any other supply. The only solution here
Speaker 1: is to clean up the standards at the origin. We
Speaker 1: began this story talking about how people who live around
Speaker 1: both the minds and the refineries claim that they become
Speaker 1: very sick and that it has damaged the environment. Where
Speaker 1: are these lawsuits now? What is the status of these cases?
Speaker 1: The case that's being brought in the Netherlands is scheduled
Speaker 1: for hearings in the coming months. The court already ruled
Speaker 1: that it has jurisdiction over what is happening in Brazil
Speaker 1: because North Hidro has subsidiaries and operations in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: So what's going to happen there is that people from
Speaker 1: the area in Barcarna around the refinery are going to
Speaker 1: fly to the Netherlands and talk about how their health
Speaker 1: and their livelihoods have been impacted by the refinery and
Speaker 1: what they say is the pollution being caused by Norse Chidro.
Speaker 1: Environmental laws in Brazil are very weak. Even if you
Speaker 1: had strong laws on the books, the justice system often
Speaker 1: just does not work. Prosecutors in Brazil will openly tell
Speaker 1: you that they don't have the tools to go out
Speaker 1: and punish cases of alleged pollution. These cases will get
Speaker 1: stuck in the system for years or even decades forward,
Speaker 1: and many other companies will need a lot more aluminum
Speaker 1: in the years ahead, not just for trucks, but for
Speaker 1: products of all kinds. Given what we're learning about where
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes from, what do we take
Speaker 1: away from this? Where do things go from here? It
Speaker 1: does seem like environmental standards need to be tightened and
Speaker 1: enforced at the source and if the Brazilian government isn't
Speaker 1: able to do that, the companies need to take it
Speaker 1: upon themselves to improve how they operate. For multinationals that
Speaker 1: by their raw materials from developing countries, what's legal on
Speaker 1: the ground is not a high enough bar for them
Speaker 1: to be able to say that they are responsibly sourcing
Speaker 1: their raw materials because so much is allowed on the ground. Jessica, Bryce,
Speaker 1: Jared and Presso thanks for talking with me today. Thank
Speaker 1: you my pleasure. Thanks for listening to us here at
Speaker 1: The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 1: hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big
Speaker 1: Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The
Speaker 1: Big Take is Vicky Bergolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink.
Speaker 1: Federica Roman Yellow is our producer. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Zeno Siddiki Hildegarcia is our engineer. Our original music was
Speaker 1: composed by Leo Sidrin and West Casova. We'll be back
Speaker 1: tomorrow with another Big Take.