To make the plastic resins that go into the flooring under Americans’ feet, Zhongtai belches greenhouse gases and mercury into the air. By its own account, Zhongtai has brought in more than 5,500 Uyghurs like Matturdi to work at its factories under a government program that human rights advocates say amounts to a grave injustice. At one end is Zhongtai, a mammoth state-owned enterprise with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party that is among the top users of forced labor in Xinjiang. Merth and Matturdi are connected by a troubling supply chain. Zhongtai did not respond to a detailed list of questions from The Intercept. Instead of watching his baby learn to walk or caring for his mother, he would spend his days laboring in Zhongtai’s facilities, exposed to both toxic chemicals and a frightening new virus. Hours later, he arrived in the regional capital of Ürümqi, where people in his group were assigned dormitory beds and given military fatigues to wear. Matturdi, whose story is detailed in a post on the company’s WeChat account, left behind his wife, newborn baby, and ailing mother. The World Health Organization had just declared Covid-19 a pandemic, and factories across China were shutting down to protect workers and prevent the coronavirus’s spread, but Zhongtai’s PVC plants were humming. The same month that Merth wrote her 2020 blog post, in a village in southern Xinjiang, 30-year-old Abdurahman Matturdi was herded onto a bus emblazoned with the words “Zhongtai Chemical.” That’s short for Xinjiang Zhongtai Chemical Company, a Chinese government-owned petrochemical firm that is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a type of plastic that is a critical ingredient in vinyl flooring. The story of vinyl flooring begins 6,600 miles away in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, where it is intertwined with the persecution of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. Very often, a new report shows, that plastic is produced using forced labor. The industry calls it “luxury vinyl tile.” In reality, it is layer upon layer of thin plastic, a heavily polluting concoction made with fossil fuels. Vinyl flooring is seeing a surge of growth, boosted in part by pandemic-era renovations. But she didn’t realize at the time that the simplicity promised by Home Depot comes at an immense environmental and human cost. In two blog posts on her flooring project, Merth linked to Home Depot’s Lifeproof page over a dozen times. Middle-class Americans were entering an era of immense choice in the workplace at many companies, it was possible for the first time ever to work from practically anywhere. They just had to figure out where to put the home office. Merth was pleased with the result, and she wrote a follow-up post a year later, as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading throughout the world and professionals with spare cash were overhauling their homes. “Buy it today, install it today,” the blond woman in the Home Depot ad promised. To her 46,000 Pinterest followers, she details tips for Ikea hacks, plant care, and what she calls “approachable woodworking.” After researching flooring that was affordable and easy to install, Merth settled on Home Depot’s Lifeproof line: vinyl planks made to look like wood that lock together without glue. Merth is a do-it-yourself influencer, part of a growing group of well-coiffed women who track their home improvement projects online through sleek videos and posts studded with affiliate links. W hen Brittany Goldwyn Merth ripped up the carpets in her Maryland home in March 2019 and laid down vinyl tile, she meticulously documented the process.
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