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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

#201

Post by nerdbert »

lazide wrote: post #160
woodruffw wrote: post #106

Earlier 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?

Dow's reaction to being confronted about this was to say they had stopped working with the company that managed to arrange for the shoes to be reused instead of chopped up. That seems fairly clear.

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

#202

Post by nerdbert »

woodruffw wrote: post #83
mirkules wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of environmental initiatives is to try to ensure the environment stays habitable to humans for longer. The goal of companies is to be profitable. The ultimate goal, then, is to find an intersection between those two concepts that makes sense for both the environment and profitability. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is the order in which this is achieved, from least to most expensive. Recycling has become incredibl…

I didn't get a "black and white" worldview from this article. In my reading, it supported much of what you've said: that companies are fundamentally profit-driven, and will employ whatever fabrications are necessary to maintain consumer appetite. Dow lying about its recycling is just a tiny niche, one that Reuters chose presumably because it was easy to fact-check. > Nobody would buy new shoes or donate old ones if t…

Yeah, the problem isn't that some of the donations end up in Indonesian flea markets. That's great. The problem is that 90% of what gets sent to Indonesia, is deemed unsuitable for resale, and then ends up tossed in a landfill.

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

#203

Post by nerdbert »

danielfoster wrote: post #62
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 find the extent to which Dow lied to be outrageous. It did not say the shoes would be recycled, but specifically said they would be used to make playground padding. Why shouldn’t honesty be expected? After all, this is a country where people still get caned. Reusing the shoes as was the case is of course better.

What is the connection between caning and dishonesty?

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

#204

Post by jessaustin »

civilized wrote: post #54
morelisp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could it be that someone who has a perspective different from yours has equal or greater context? On what basis do you assume that you have more context, that a person who has the context you have would automatically be convinced of what you believe? If you get X for cheap, that frees you up to make Y's. In a poor country, there's no shortage of Y's that people need or want.

"Someone" might know something, but you in particular have no idea what you're talking about. You think you know better than Indonesians what their laws should be, but you don't.

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

#205

Post by jessaustin »

SergeAx wrote: post #121

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?

Only a small number of nations are actually sanctioning Russian oil, so there's no need to "bypass" anything.

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

#207

Post by officialjunk »

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.

so let's imagine what this journalist expected to happen to the shoes really did happen, and mulched up pieces of metal and batteries from the trackers really ended up in playgrounds intended to provide a soft and safe surface to play on.

maybe the journalism is good, but it poses danger to kids getting cut and being exposed to battery chemicals.

also if i ran a playground surface mulching service i would have a metal detectors for safety reasons and not allow these shoes to be mulched, which could be what actually happened.

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

#208

Post by joshuaissac »

hgsgm wrote: post #191
joshuaissac wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manufa…

The government can raise taxes from Al the people who aren't wasting money on shoes to pay for all that extra industry that they want to subsidize. In no way is being poorer the solution to not being able to afford things.

Poor countries are generally bad at collecting taxes,[1] and what little is collected is at risk of being pocketed by officials due to higher levels of corruption.[2] Subsidies may also fall afoul of WTO obligations.[3] Besides, Western countries also have anti-dumping regulations that are in practice used to shield domestic industries being damaged by cheaper imports.[4]

1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2015/04/30...

2. https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/are-poorer-countr...

3. https://www.trade.gov/trade-guide-wto-subsidies

4. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ten-Years-of-Anti-dump...

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

#209

Post by brookst »

cjrp wrote: post #46
brookst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you’d be more likely to throw things away than recycle them because it’s possible that rather than being recycled they will be reused?

Or is it more like “well if they lied about that, what else are they lying about”.

So, better to throw decent shoes in the garbage than take a chance of being lied to.

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

#210

Post by josephcsible »

wwfzyn wrote: post #184

I see a lot of reuse is good so it's all good. Do we know if the buyers of these reused shoes will recycle then when done or are these ending in a landfill? Because that's the ultimate issue here. Dow promised their end was not landfill.

Imagine that you collect soda bottles and promise you'll recycle them. When you get them, you turn them into sweaters that you sell. If someone who buys a sweater throws it in the landfill after it wears out, does that mean you broke your promise?
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