It is safe to say that one of America's biggest parties is the Mardis Gras festival held each year in New Orleans. If you are familiar with this festival, you are familiar with the beads that are exchanged for partial nudity. Most people fail to see where the beads come from. These beads although rather cheap and simple, are manufactured manually and produced on a large scale.
The beads come from China, and are manufactured in work-camp type scenarios by people who will work to complete a quota for around 14 hours straight. They eat, sleep, and work in these factories 300 days out of the year, only leaving on Sundays and for the Chinese new year.
Although the workers are there by choice, the conditions are kind of terrible. Ten people to a room with five beds, cafeteria style meals each day, shared showers/bathrooms are among the few things they deal with each day. The beads are composed of polyethylene and polystyrene. Polystyrene is also a carcinogenic. The factories are not well ventilated so toxins are constantly inhaled by most, if not all workers.
I believe if that the workers are there by choice, the people in charge of the factories need to step up their game when it comes to working conditions. Although the money the factory makes isn't on such a grand scale as the US, but pay the workers real wages for the work they do, and keep them safe.
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