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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

#41

Post by nmilo »

> 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 can't afford to clothe themselves then fuck the "local textile industry," aka forcing people to spend money on clothes they probably cannot afford. Wearing shoes should be a human right (God knows there's probably enough shoes for everyone on Earth) and saying we should stop sending second-hand clothes to places for the purposes of job creation is just breaking windows to make jobs for window repairmen.

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

#42

Post by renewiltord »

jasonlotito wrote: post #28
RobLach wrote: post #18

So actually they're doing something better than recycling?

Yeah, selling people shoes with trackers in them. That's good. That's what you are okay with.

Well, they didn't know they had trackers in them. I reckon I wouldn't be mad at Goodwill if I bought shoes there and they had trackers in them.

The trackers are only there because Reuters was running a sting.

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

#43

Post by ianburrell »

kzrdude wrote: post #30
settrans wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed this is HWFO's core thesis: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-...

Landfilling still seems very inefficient. As Sweden has done for a long time: what ever you put in "regular waste" goes to incineration. The heat is used for district heating. Remains from incineration can be landfilled. Exhaust gases are monitored and cleaned. Regular landfills have thus been abolished, which is a success. It's a small step, but IMO a very notable achievement. And it has outraged some that plastic "…

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 probably worry less about recycling plastic and more about making sure there is no litter.

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

#46

Post by cjrp »

brookst wrote: post #19
peyton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think lying about the fate of these shoes is pretty bad and destroys trust. I’d think twice about recycling. “Here’s why that’s a good thing!” doesn’t cut it for me.

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”.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by maximus-decimus »

joshuaissac wrote: post #37
7speter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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

#49

Post by morelisp »

nmilo wrote: post #41

> 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…

[flagged]

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

#50

Post by pfdietz »

This surprises me. I'd expect the shoes to instead be recycled into fuel for cement kilns, which is what a lot of "recycled" plastic turns into anyway.

Anyway, the problem isn't that the shoes aren't recycled. It's that shoes are made from materials derived from fossil fuels.

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