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Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

reuters.com

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Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#111

Post by moronicQ »

woodruffw wrote: post #107
pmorici wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the article wants you to accept a very narrow definition of recycling. reusing perfectly good shoes fits the definition of recycling in my book.

The phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle" because it's intended to be an ordered taxonomy: reduction comes first, following by reusing existing materials, followed by recycling them into new materials. Reusing perfectly good shoes is a good outcome, and nobody in this thread has suggested otherwise. But it isn't recycling in the way that Dow stated, either literally (since they claimed a polar opposite use) or definitio…

[dead]

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#113

Post by Robotbeat »

woodruffw wrote: post #107
pmorici wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the article wants you to accept a very narrow definition of recycling. reusing perfectly good shoes fits the definition of recycling in my book.

The phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle" because it's intended to be an ordered taxonomy: reduction comes first, following by reusing existing materials, followed by recycling them into new materials. Reusing perfectly good shoes is a good outcome, and nobody in this thread has suggested otherwise. But it isn't recycling in the way that Dow stated, either literally (since they claimed a polar opposite use) or definitio…

[flagged]

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#114

Post by hermitcrab »

nonethewiser wrote: post #100
hermitcrab wrote: post #58

This is a great piece of investigative journalism. We need for of this holding big companies to account. BTW Trainers being re-used is good. But big companies lying to us to is not good.

But where is the lie? Dow says they are making tracks and playgrounds out of shoes. The article grants this is true. But for some reason the article tries to spin the fact that they are also recycling them whole as some scandal. > U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting…

"In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore."

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#115

Post by Robotbeat »

nextaccountic wrote: post #90
oblib wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really seeing how giving preowned shoes to folks is not "recycling" them. When I was young we'd take glass soda bottles back to the store to be cleaned and refilled and we'd get a little money back. That was "recycling".

The article says > In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

So they did even better than that because that plan didn’t make sense. I’m glad for it, and I’m angry at the hall monitor type attitude that would want to punish them for doing the objectively better thing.

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#116

Post by jimnotgym »

nextaccountic wrote: post #90
oblib wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really seeing how giving preowned shoes to folks is not "recycling" them. When I was young we'd take glass soda bottles back to the store to be cleaned and refilled and we'd get a little money back. That was "recycling".

The article says > In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

... and I think that is really important, because it gives the impression to the public that their plastic waste doesn't matter, because dow can recycle it into a running track. Now we don't even know if they can do that, this is good journalism. The important point is what if they were beyond reuse? What would they have done then? I suspect an Indonesian landfill is the answer.

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#117

Post by drak0n1c »

gowings97 wrote: post #39
booi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is reduce, reuse and recycle in that order . If anything seems like they did a great job here.

Interesting how that phrase has largely disappeared from the current green message carried by major media. Especially the reduce component.

There's a form of broken window fallacy going on in green policy circles. Particularly the Cash for Clunkers program, and California's recent banning of trucks made before 2010. It is an attempt to drive demand and raw resource extraction to produce new equipment, by destroying existing supply of refined goods and driving up prices. Used cars are scarce now. Opposite of reduce/reuse.

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#118

Post by woodruffw »

Robotbeat wrote: post #113
woodruffw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle" because it's intended to be an ordered taxonomy: reduction comes first, following by reusing existing materials, followed by recycling them into new materials. Reusing perfectly good shoes is a good outcome, and nobody in this thread has suggested otherwise. But it isn't recycling in the way that Dow stated, either literally (since they claimed a polar opposite use) or definitio…

[flagged]

Again: literally everyone in this thread agrees that it's preferable, and nobody is mad.

The error here is in "they": Dow doesn't get credit for doing the preferable thing, because there's no evidence that it's what they intended to do. All available evidence suggests that Dow intended to do a worse thing, and someone saw a business opportunity within Dow's apathy.

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#119

Post by billsmithaustin »

uberman wrote: post #2

I kind of see where the "outrage" might come from in the lead as apparently they promised that the shoes were going to be recycled. However, the mantra is "reduce reuse recycle". Clearly it is better in the save the planet sense that perfectly good shoes were reused rather than destroyed for playground padding. I'm a liberal in general but this kind of false outrage makes us look foolish.

I agree that if the shoes were perfectly good, it would have been better to keep them. Are you asserting the author recycled perfectly good shoes, or are you just describing a hypothetical? If the former, what in the article suggests the shoes were still perfectly good?

Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

#120

Post by joshuaissac »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #48
joshuaissac wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is. While the used clothing sector provides employment to hundreds of thousands of people in less developed countries, it also damages their local textile manufacturing industry. Prices for locally produced clothes have to include both manufacturing and logistics costs, whereas the imported used clothes from Western c…

But if they literally have free clothing, doesn't it make that local industry useless? Literally provides no value at that point. This only seems like a problem to me if people literally can't provide value in any other way. To which the solution would seem to create a new type of industry, not create an artificial need by creating a clothes penury on purpose.

In isolation, yes. It is better for the locals to get clothes for free than for local resources (whether capital or labour) to be expended to produce them locally.

But having a strong textile manufacturing industry promotes the development of other adjacent industries (e.g. dyes, chemicals) that would not be able to stand on their own initially, and can output products that are useful to more than just textile manufacturing. It easier to develop a new industry if the country already has other industries that can support its growth.

In a sense, it is like a tax on clothes, paid by the consumers, funding textile-adjacent industries, but directed by private actors rather than the government. If it pays off, other things become cheaper and potentially offset the increased cost of clothes.

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