Wow, that's an exemplary investigative journalism! World will be so much better now. Maybe these guys better spend their energy and funds on tracking Russian oil, which is exported in troves bypassing sanctions?
Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
121–130 of 232 posts
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#122Isn't reselling them recycling them? I'd only be outraged if they ended up in a landfill.
Perhaps they should have tried shoes that weren't in wearable condition to see if those got recycled.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
*diesel Big Rigs/Buses. (It's an important distinction, as one would ban the majority of vehicles in the US). Diesel vehicles are particularly bad for the environment, and as we've seen even worse than we thought because of the widespread cheating from manufacturers for environmental testing, and big rigs & busses have previously had massive exceptions carved out for them from environmental regs already for a long time.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A torrent of cheap, unregulated second-hand clothing flowing into Indonesia also adds to the country’s mounting garbage problem, said Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, a nonprofit working on waste pollution. He said much of that merchandise is in such poor condition that vendors can’t resell it. > “They sort through it and a very small percentage is actually reusab…
Yeah I don't think anyone would be too upset if they plucked out the 10% of shoes that are in good-enough condition to actually resell in Indonesia, before grinding the rest up to make sports tracks. The issue is that it seems like all the shoes were sent to Indonesia, regardless of reusability, and they turned a blind eye to what happened to them after that.
“They said it’s not uncommon to throw out half the shoes they receive because the footwear is not good enough to sell.”
Apparently it may be closer to half than 10%.
And protectionism in Indonesia makes it illegal to import used shoes because of “hygiene”.
I’m not absolving Dow, but there was a lot to get angry about in the article.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#125I would like to know whether they put trackers into any shoes that were in bad condition. I think that would be a much more damning result if those were sent to the wrong place.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#126What’s the scandal here? Perfectly good shoes were sent to a country that seems to have a need and market for reasonably priced shoes. The people on the ground there aren’t going to care about some bourgeois project like recycling them into a walking path so more wealthy people’s feet are comfortable on leisure walks through a park. The people working on these projects have their own opinions on it and acted accordin…
> What’s the scandal here?
If they intended to do this why not advertise it, like you said reuse is a better outcome than recycling them. But it's much more likely they found the cheapest bidder to do what they asked and didn't verify anything, so what are their other cheapest bidders doing that isn't reuse/recycling? The scandal is that they're lying about what they're doing so why would we take their word about other things.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#127I 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’m not outraged that the shoes were reused instead of recycled; I agree with you about that probably being a better outcome. I don’t think that was the article’s purpose, however: the purpose was to show that companies like Dow can’t be taken at their word when it comes to environmental initiatives. The outcome in this case was preferential, but all evidence points to that outcome being the product of Dow simply not…
> the purpose was to show that companies like Dow can’t be taken at their word when it comes to environmental initiatives
Did we really need this example to show it? Shoes?
Nestle is trying to buy all the water, maybe that would be a better place to focus.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you put a shoemaker out of a job and give them free shoes, they now can’t afford anything other than shoes. Economies grow prosperous when there are more opportunities for economic exchange.
But my point is, why isn't the solution to create more jobs that aren't shoe-making so that they can contribute to the economy in a new way (idk, making yoyos) and now they have both yoyo's and free shoes?
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#129What’s the scandal here? Perfectly good shoes were sent to a country that seems to have a need and market for reasonably priced shoes. The people on the ground there aren’t going to care about some bourgeois project like recycling them into a walking path so more wealthy people’s feet are comfortable on leisure walks through a park. The people working on these projects have their own opinions on it and acted accordin…
I would not be that surprised to hear that the average Indonesian is less picky than the average Westerner WRT shoes, and so I’m sure they are getting plenty of extra life out of those shoes, which is absolutely great!
But the shoes do ultimately have a finite lifespan. It isn’t obvious how Dow is planning to track the shoes through their second, apparently grey-market life, to fulfill their part of the deal. They said the things will end up recycled. If they can’t fulfill that promise they should stop lying.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#130I 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.
Reusing the shoes doesn’t make them vanish. If they are being reused that’s fine, actually better than fine, that’s great. But how will Dow track the shows through various secondhand markets to make sure they ultimately fulfill their promise to recycle them in the end? I think that will be basically impossible.