Kodak is having a fashion moment.
A few weeks ago, a camera keychain-sized accessory based on the 1987 model appeared. sold out in a day. In some markets, the company's compact digital cameras have outsold those from Canon or Sony. Things are going so well that Kodak has even developed a popular streetwear brand with a storefront in Seoul that attracts young people with its bright colors and fun retro vibe. Not bad for a 133-year-old company that filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and in August. debunked reports What is this may have to turn off again.
Inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York in 1888. Over the next century, the word Kodak, coined by George Eastman, essentially became synonymous with the process of photography. He democratized photography with the affordable Brownie camera in 1900 and then revolutionized it again in 1935 with the release of Kodachrome, one of the first commercially successful color films. In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented first digital camera — and by the end of that decade, the company was making billions of dollars a year.
But for much of the 20th century, Kodak was also essentially a U.S. defense contractor. Together with its subsidiary Eastman Chemical, Kodak produced varnish for military aircraft, gas mask parts, and refined uranium for the Manhattan Project.
All of this has left a long trail of environmental damage, especially in Rochester. In the 1940s and 1950s, Kodak recycled low-level waste. at the local landfill. By 1990, the company was repeatedly accused of mishandling hazardous chemicals, including failure to report toxic spills, illegal dumping of solvents into the city sewer system and flouting air pollution rules. People living near the plant began to notice rare disease clusters. In 1994, Kodak agreed $8 million settlement repair a leaking sewer system that has been carrying industrial waste beneath the city for decades. According to Environment Working Group Report released that same year, in the first half of the 1990s, the company released more known carcinogens into the water than any other pollutant in New York City.
In his new book Tales of martial chemistryFilm historian Alice Lovejoy reveals this little-known aspect of the film industry by describing both Kodak and its German contemporary Agfa, a film company that at one point converted part of its factory to produce poison gas for the First World War. Agfa also polluted the cities where its factories were located, which even inspired a documentary. Bitterness in Bitterfeldwhich, Lovejoy recalls, was then secretly circulated among the underground East German environmental movement.
Although Kodak has since promised to cut emissions and committed tens of millions of dollars to clean up – and now posts regular Earth Day messages about corporate sustainability goals—much of this polluting legacy remains. When asked about the story Lovejoy describes in her book, Kodak sent a copy of its current sustainability report and declined to comment further.
“A company like Kodak, which we consider to be a pioneer in creating images that live in this cultural sphere, is deeply involved in changing the essence of our world,” Lovejoy told Grist. This has had a profound impact on the environment and on frontline communities. But for most of the world, it's still just a camera company. In his book, Lovejoy tells the story of a Kodak representative telling people affected by a methylene chloride spill: “We were never considered a chemical company…we just made yellow boxes.”
According to Lovejoy, this may be the company's public image, but it was never true. “Internally, they identified themselves as a chemical company,” she said. And for Lovejoy, “the environment and the military cannot be separated.”
“The history of this material comes through poison gas, the atomic bomb, and all these materials that are really part of the history of the 20th century and now the 21st century.”
Well-known companies such as DuPont, General Electric and Exxon are among those that similarly pollute the land, water and air in their surrounding communities, often while simultaneously serving as contractors for organizations such as the Department of Defense. They all kept their environmental and social damage (and military connections) largely out of public view until they were forced to pay for restoration decades later.
Some of these companies have since moved to a circular economy, Lovejoy explained. Among them is Eastman Chemical, a Kodak subsidiary headquartered in Tennessee. Today, Grist said, he works primarily with plastics and federal decarbonization grants even though I know that plastic recycling just some kind of work. In July, President Donald Trump granted Eastman Chemical a two-year exemption from environmental regulations that required the company to report carcinogenic emissions. Meanwhile, Kodak still produces most of the world's film in Rochester, but on a much smaller scale than before.
Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how the products for which a company is famous may be only a tiny part of its social and environmental legacy. That lesson applies today to products like smartphones and solar panels, Lovejoy said. “Do movies exist anymore? Yeah, sort of, but it's not what it used to be,” Lovejoy said. “But the environmental impacts are still there and will continue to be for a long, long time.”
“This is not just a Kodak story,” Lovejoy said. This is a story about how resource-intensive, even violent, industries can often be obscured by good PR. Just as the uranium nitrite used as a toner for Kodak film depended on colonial mining in the Belgian Congo, batteries and solar panels are similarly dependent on the mining industry.
“I think we need to have a more realistic view of what companies like this are and do,” Lovejoy said. “For those of us who consume a lot of media, this means understanding the deeper global networks that underlie our devices or our experiences of the movies or shows we watch while streaming.”
