It turns out I really had no idea how things are made! We just spent a week in Shenzhen and Guanzhou, two manufacturing cities close to Hong Kong. This is where our shoelaces, iPods, dog toys, cameras, T-shirts, bicycles, and laptops come from. We toured a bunch of different factories and tried to understand firsthand what it means to make the decision to mass-produce a piece of consumer electronics. We were only allowed to see the best (in the human rights and environmental sense) factories, but it was an eye opener how much manual labor is involved in production. This disposable cap on my water bottle was probably directly handled by six different people before it was packed to ship. One of the best parts of the trip was getting to spend some time with the amazing people in our group. Many more photos and videos on their blogs and flickrs:
