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

Post by leipert » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 7:58 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #85

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…

> Recycling has become incredibly expensive [1] and it's hardly making financial sense anymore Small quibble with your wording there - recycling hasn't BECOME more expensive: for the most part it was never real. China was taking our "recyclables" that were never actually recyclable, telling us they were recycling it, and instead dumping almost all of it in landfills. I recently got into 3d printing, and was sucked in…

Post by sp332 » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

notpushkin wrote: post #81

deathanatos wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

Why don't they put non-reusable shoes back to recycle though?

Post by nradov » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 8:04 PM UTC

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #78

nradov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They already had local clothing industries - people in poor countries weren't walking around naked until the mid 80s when container-shipping meant offshoring trash became cheap. If this issue was isolated to shoes, and those were technically unavailable for local manufacture, then you'd probably be right. But these practices destroy all industry, leaving the people without any manufacturing base or value creation out…

Post by junglistguy » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 8:17 PM UTC

Post by rippercushions » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 8:22 PM UTC

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.