Am I only one who questions this recycling plan in the first place? Aren't we quite worried about microplastics at this point? And isn't making fields of this which stay in sun and weather just eventually going to spread it around? Not that I have been on a track in long time, but already then I noted the wearing of tiny bits off. Where will all of it end?
Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
161–170 of 232 posts
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Caring more" requires us to believe that Dow knows and intended for this to happen, rather than it being a beneficial outcome of local economic pressures. That seems unlikely; why go to the effort of publicizing a specific recycling program (one that's worse!) when you're secretly going to do a better thing? The much more likely explanation is that Dow doesn't care, and expressed that lack of care by paying someone…
Innocent until proven guilty
This is an Internet forum, not a court of law.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#163My city has a waste to energy plant. Anything I put in the waste bin gets burned, and the energy is used to generate power or heat for the city. I have a hell of a time convincing my wife that we ought to just chuck all plastics into the waste rather than stick them in the recycling bin, since only God knows where the plastics in the recycling bin end up. Maybe they get recycled, maybe they get dumped onto a smolderi…
is burning plastic actually an exothermic reaction?
yes, it's basically gas/oil
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Caring more" requires us to believe that Dow knows and intended for this to happen, rather than it being a beneficial outcome of local economic pressures. That seems unlikely; why go to the effort of publicizing a specific recycling program (one that's worse!) when you're secretly going to do a better thing? The much more likely explanation is that Dow doesn't care, and expressed that lack of care by paying someone…
So you're judging them by their perceived level of caring and knowledge, even though you have no evidence of it, and the outcome was better than expected . Sounds like hell?
I’m operating based on all available evidence in the article. I welcome any evidence to the contrary.
If “hell” means “telling the truth” or “acting with basic diligence,” well.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Burning trash produces CO2 and that needs to be factored in. My guess is that CO2 produced transporting waste to landfill is less than that produced by burning. With landfills, there is problem with food and wharf waste producing methane. Separating that out and composting it, which produces CO2, is solution that my city does. Sending waste to well-run landfill feels wrong but can be best alternative. We should proba…
> Burning trash produces CO2 and that needs to be factored in. My understanding is that waste incineration includes co2 scrubbers to capture co2 so it isn’t released into the atmosphere.
More likely SO2 scrubbers. Incinerator scrubbed CO2 would be incredibly dirty for most industrial CO2 uses.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#166> The donated shoes that ended up in Indonesia have added to a flood of illegal second-hand clothing pouring into that developing country, according to a senior government official there, who said such cast-offs pose a public health risk, undercut its local textile industry and often pile more waste into its already bulging landfills. Do they even understand the words coming out on the page? I'm sorry but if people c…
They will never have a local textile industry if you have to compete with free.
There pretty much won't ever be a local textile industry unless you have incredibly cheap labour.
Except with protectionism, which is what gives most countries their local textile industry, but that comes at a cost - either higher prices, or wealth drained from other sectors in their economy.
Banning/disincentivizing 2nd hand imports won't create a local industry in most places, unless you do the same with 1st hand.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#167So Dow actually made better and more efficient use of the shoes than they claimed to?
What a scandal? This all seems like hair splitting to me, it's not clear if reuse of used shoes is better or worse for the environment than just pulverising them. Recycling has far lower value than most people tend to think it does so reusing shoes for six months to a year is very arguably more impactful.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
It's not considered recycling because reuse is explicitly better than recycling. You aren't supposed to equate the two because it would imply recycling was a viable alternative to reuse.
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're judging them by their perceived level of caring and knowledge, even though you have no evidence of it, and the outcome was better than expected . Sounds like hell?
I’m operating based on all available evidence in the article. I welcome any evidence to the contrary. If “hell” means “telling the truth” or “acting with basic diligence,” well.
From the article - a subcontractor of a subcontractor exported them instead of shredding them. It's at least 3 levels removed from Dow, and likely the Singapore Gov't that did it, as these are Singaporean companies. And they picked them up from the bins, they weren't delivered them by someone else.
What level of diligence should Dow be doing here, especially since the outcome doesn't seem to be a bad one - if anything, a better one?
"None of the 11 pairs of footwear donated by Reuters were turned into exercise paths or kids’ parks in Singapore.
Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. The manager said his firm had been hired by a waste management company involved in the recycling program to retrieve shoes from the donation bins for delivery to that company’s local warehouse."
Re: Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is the thing though. If all the perfectly good pairs of shoes were destroyed, the reported might have wrote an equally aggrieved piece about the shameful way these perfectly good shoes were not reused. Seems like they set up a strawman ready to be outraged no matter what Dow did.
Shipping western clothing to poor countries tends to destroy local industry. I prefer to be able to make my own choices, not have people lie to be and then do whatever they feel is cheaper. They have to pay to properly recycle, but can just sell the old shoes. This is fraud, pure and simple. They asked for the donations of shoes under false pretenses. (There's a chance it was whatever firm they paid - but then they'r…
In the same sense that secondhand book stores hurt authors? Sounds like a bunch of BS to me, somebody still has to make the shoes to begin with.