Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping

When a jacket's label says “Made in China,” often that is only part of the story. It's more likely that various elements of the jacket—material, buttons, metal for the zipper—come from different points on the globe, meaning that the item is well-traveled by the time it reaches a department store. Filmmaker Denis Delestrac's Freightened looks at the environmental toll of all that transportation, focusing on the modern freighter system, in which enormous ships carry vast amounts of enclosed containers filled with contents known only to corporations. The obvious ramifications for possible terrorism are touched upon here, while the transfer of drugs and illegal weapons is already an assumed given. Oil spills from freighters are a fact of life, but ships also inadvertently capture animal species and transport them to different points on the planet, where they can become dangerous as non-natives. Another problem is that freighter companies can fly under multiple “flags of convenience,” meaning that a ship can technically and temporarily be tied to any country that is financially advantageous for the corporation—but may be unfair to workers. All of these facets represent a mostly hidden aspect of the costs of globalization. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (T. Keogh)