250 km from Zagreb in the aluminum fac- tory MAL in Hungarian town of Ajka one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in the history of that country occured on October 4, 2010. At 12.35 pm the tank 10 leaked one million cubic meters of “red mud” which pol- luted 40 square kilometers. Ten people died, hundreds of houses were demolished and destroyed, more than two hundred people were seriously injured and in total 7000 peo- ple were affected with this.
Red mud is the outcome of Bayer’s process of turning bauxite into aluminium. It has high ph values of 13 and high alkalinity and it is full of heavy metals such as cadmium, chromi- um, arsenic and mercury.
Several months later journalists scattered, environmental organizations became silent and everything seemingly calmed down. Half a year later I went to record the consequenc- es that greed and capitalism left behind sac- rificing nature and people.