Name: 揭祕你最愛的化妝產品背後的黑暗祕密 - Shady - Refinery29 (The Dark Secret Behind Your Favorite Makeup Products | Shady | Refinery29)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:59:31.000Z
Duration: 19 min 29 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

Makeup can be a tool for liberation and expression.

It can make us feel beautiful, but one of beauty's most popular ingredients has a dark side.

When children are the hidden cost in our cosmetics.

We're here in London on a press trip with Lush Cosmetics.

The British company invited us here to learn about an initiative surrounding one of the

most controversial ingredients going into makeup today.

An unassuming mineral essential to modern life.

The property of heat and electrical resistance makes this mineral invaluable.

For decades it's been used in everyday products like electronics, insulation, paint, and even toothpaste.

But over the past few years the cosmetics industry's demand for glowing radiant shimmer

From the perfect, no makeup makeup gleam, to the blinding shine of a highlighter created

The majority of the world's mica comes from India, where 2016 Thomson Reuters Foundation

investigation revealed that it was being mined by children and had a deadly cost.

The revelation forced the beauty industry into a moral reckoning.

Some companies have pledged to work with the mining communities in India to create a sustainable

With progress that's been slow to come by.

Companies like Lush that have built a brand on ethical sourcing have taken a different approach.

Without a transparent supply chain, it decided to pull out of natural mica altogether.

This glittering shimmery effect is all the synthetic mica.

It looks pretty but I'm about to find out that it's more complicated than appearances

Much as I love sparkles, I didn't want anything put into a Lush product that you

know could have had a death attached to it.

The nice thing about the synthetic mica is it has much more variety of the this sparkle

So really there's no reason to have natural mica.

It's much more complicated in that natural mica that's a commodity which is in almost

You should make sure that the families where you buy the mica from as a company get decent

As corporations roll out initiatives with promises of positive change.

I'm curious to know how they're actually impacting the people and especially the children on

Globally the mica industry is worth over half a billion dollars.

And India is at its center with the world's largest and highest quality reserves of mica.

The majority of it can be found in the country's eastern states.

We're leaving New Delhi and we're about to take a sleeper train to a region called Jarkan.

Which is where a lot of this mining is happening.

Jharkhand is a mining state with rich reserves of coal, copper, and of course mica.

Most of the nearly 33 million residents live in rural areas where illegal and unregulated

It's been this way since the 1980s when restrictive environmental laws drove the industry underground.

It's been a very long journey and we're trying to keep a low profile.

Just because this is such a sensitive subject here.

Now many of the mines are abandoned and scavenged, while others are run by illicit operators.

We're finally getting close because you can see all of the shimmer in the dirt.

It's the first time I've ever seen pretty dirt.

I met up with Rohit Gandhi our local contact who secured our access to the mine.

I'm gonna keep the cars ready just in case any of these contractors who actually mined

They know it's illegal right to use children in the trade for mining then obviously they're

It's all mixed with gravel, and then they'll sift it through and they'll take the mica out

and that then go and sell to somebody who will then you know shipped overseas.

Pooja Bhurla is only 11 years old and has been mining mica since she was eight.

Do you ever get scared when you're working in the mines?

Jharkhand suffers from a classic case of the resource curse.

A phenomenon where areas with abundant resources tend to be worse off for it thanks to government

Despite the fact that this area is rich in mica and other minerals,

Jharkhand has one of the highest poverty rates in the entire country.

Many of these children including Pooja make less than a quarter a day.

But it can mean the difference between something to eat and an empty stomach.

What are the other children in the town doing?

children are working all across the region in mines just like these.

Seeing these mines and meeting these children it's easy to understand why Lush wouldn't

This is incredibly scary and I can't even believe there's kids all the way down there.

But it's also painfully clear that these children have no alternative.

Can you tell me how old you were when you first started working in the mines?

If you didn't have to mine, what would you be doing today?

Do you have any idea where the mica goes after you mine it?

We had to take off really quickly from that mine because we heard that people were coming

The mica trade here is built on a facade that it's players have a stake in maintaining.