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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

#31

Post by booi »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #29

What’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…

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

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

#32

Post by phkahler »

anigbrowl wrote: post #23
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 have no problem with the shoes being reused, neither does anyone else apparently. I have a big problem with corporations lying, which lies are not mitigated by a beneficial outcome. This is the problem with utilitarianism; it has no red lines. You can try to be utilitarian and think you're only concerned with outcomes, but the reality is that foresight and perception are highly limited. In practice people assume th…

>> the ends are actually OK, so that validates (or at least excuses) the deceptive means

The end does not justify the means. In this case perhaps the end is environmentally similar, but then the deception serves no purpose and only discredits them so we ignore everything they say afterwards.

There are side effects to deceptive means that are often worse than the topic at hand.

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

#33

Post by anigbrowl »

phkahler wrote: post #32
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with the shoes being reused, neither does anyone else apparently. I have a big problem with corporations lying, which lies are not mitigated by a beneficial outcome. This is the problem with utilitarianism; it has no red lines. You can try to be utilitarian and think you're only concerned with outcomes, but the reality is that foresight and perception are highly limited. In practice people assume th…

>> the ends are actually OK, so that validates (or at least excuses) the deceptive means The end does not justify the means. In this case perhaps the end is environmentally similar, but then the deception serves no purpose and only discredits them so we ignore everything they say afterwards. There are side effects to deceptive means that are often worse than the topic at hand.

Yes, that's the point and why I describe equanimity with bad means as a problem.

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

#34

Post by nradov »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #6
uberman wrote: post #4

Earlier 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…

It's never going to be economically viable for most poor countries to develop local clothing industries. Even without imports of used clothing the economies of scale in that industry are just brutal. Poor countries that want to protect local industry can impose import tariffs, but in most cases they would be better off with unrestricted free trade.

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

#35

Post by rootusrootus »

gruez wrote: post #26
baron816 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was plastics companies like Dow that convince us that recycling was just as good. I have frequently encountered the attitude of "these single use plastics are ok to use since we can just recycle them". Even under ideal circumstances, recycling uses a lot of energy.

>I guess it was plastics companies like Dow that convince us that recycling was just as good. I have frequently encountered the attitude of "these single use plastics are ok to use since we can just recycle them". That's funny because I've never heard anyone saying this, yet every time there's a discussion about recycling comments like this inevitably show up.

Dow does in fact claim to be able to recycle 'hard-to-recycle plastics' [0]. A lot of single use plastics are of that variety, for sure. Sure, they do kinda avoid the word 'recycle' and replace it with 'convert' so perhaps they are being honest enough.

[0] https://corporate.dow.com/en-us/science-and-sustainability/p...

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

#36

Post by Freak_NL »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #6
uberman wrote: post #4

Earlier 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…

That's also exactly what the article mentions. The Indonesian government banned imports of second hand clothing to protect the local textile industry.

While the exporter isn't doing anything illegal in Indonesia, the Indonesian importer certainly is (according to the explanation in the article). Abetting criminal activities in a neighbouring friendly country is rarely desirable.

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

#37

Post by joshuaissac »

7speter wrote: post #20
LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Huh? Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is.

> 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 countries are donated and can be profitably sold at much lower prices, covering only logistics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44951670

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

#38

Post by ianburrell »

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 read article a while ago that can’t find about how people’s emotional connection to stuff influences getting rid of things. People want to have things disposed of properly. This is especially true for things with close connection like clothes, shoes, or furniture. Their shoes meant something and should be treated with dignity and as described. But to recipient, they are used shoes.

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

#39

Post by gowings97 »

booi wrote: post #31
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #29

What’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…

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.

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

#40

Post by davidhyde »

rr808 wrote: post #7

Genuinely expected the answer to be Indonesian rubbish dump.

From memory, and this may have changed in the last 10 years, Indonesia doesn’t really do “rubbish dumps”. They sweep everything in the street, including rubbish from peoples homes into small piles and burn it there and then. Might be different in Jakarta but this is what I saw everywhere else. The smoke and smell of burnt plastic was everywhere. I only spent a month there but I got around a lot and on more then one occasion witnessed Malaysian tourists asking Indonesian locals why there was rubbish everywhere. No bins hey. The national parks were (still are?) especially bad. Anyway, Indonesia is probably not the best final destination for any sort of waste.

IMO, Indonesia is not the problem, its really the farce of plastic recycling.

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