'Dow Said it Recycled Our Shoes - But Instead They Went to an Indonesian Flea Market' (reuters.com) 152
Reuters reports that U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow and the Singapore government "said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks.
"Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes. Most got exported instead." At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.
There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.
These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren't supposed to be here.
Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore....
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.
But that's not what happened to the shoes donated by Reuters. Ten pairs moved first from the donation bins to the exporter's facility, then on to neighboring Indonesia, in some cases traveling hundreds of miles to different corners of the vast archipelago, the location trackers showed....
The findings come as environmental groups say chemical companies like Dow are making exaggerated or false claims about recycling in order to burnish their green credentials, and to undermine proposed regulations to rein in the soaring production of plastics used in single-use packaging and fast fashion.
Dow says it will remove Yok Impex from its project next week, according to the article. But it also adds that Dow "did not explain why a used-clothing exporter had been involved" in its recycling program," and Dow and its partners "did not explain what procedures were in place to ensure that donated shoes weren't exported, diverted for resale or pilfered from bins."
Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor for a nonprofit working on waste pollution, tells Reuters that when vendors ultimately receive the non-recycled shoes, "a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills."
"Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes. Most got exported instead." At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.
There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.
These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren't supposed to be here.
Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore....
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.
But that's not what happened to the shoes donated by Reuters. Ten pairs moved first from the donation bins to the exporter's facility, then on to neighboring Indonesia, in some cases traveling hundreds of miles to different corners of the vast archipelago, the location trackers showed....
The findings come as environmental groups say chemical companies like Dow are making exaggerated or false claims about recycling in order to burnish their green credentials, and to undermine proposed regulations to rein in the soaring production of plastics used in single-use packaging and fast fashion.
Dow says it will remove Yok Impex from its project next week, according to the article. But it also adds that Dow "did not explain why a used-clothing exporter had been involved" in its recycling program," and Dow and its partners "did not explain what procedures were in place to ensure that donated shoes weren't exported, diverted for resale or pilfered from bins."
Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor for a nonprofit working on waste pollution, tells Reuters that when vendors ultimately receive the non-recycled shoes, "a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills."
Reuse is better than recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really shilling for an oil company here, but reuse is always a greener option than recycling, they did the right thing here.
Why destroy a perfectly functional pair of shoes?
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I agree on the greener option, but it still makes Dow a bunch of liars. Enough of these little incidents add up to the point where distrust of corporations in general is deserved. ;-)
Exaggerate that a bit and you get an important ingredient of most cyberpunk novels
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I fail to see how grinding usable shoes into playground ground cover is "greener" than extending the useful lives of the shoes? After the next owner is done with them, they can still be ground up into playground ground cover.
If not for this donation program, what would the owners have done with their old shoes? Most likely tossed them into a landfill.
The program co-sponsored by Dow is a bit silly, why ship used shoes across the Pacific Ocean? Don't they have used shoes in Singapore? Can't we grind up our ow
Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:2)
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Enough of these little incidents add up to the point where distrust of corporations in general is deserved.
Conservatives would say the same thing about government.
There is exactly one workable solution, the diffusion of power. We need to both end cooperative federalism and move to more pure federalism and we need to do away with the legal liability shields that enable corporations to become large.
Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
which makes it frsud.
Who is being defrauded?
Who is being harmed?
Perhaps they do recycle shoes, but only after taking out those still good enough to be reused, which is sensible and responsible.
I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.
Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and anyone with Google Maps and the initiative to check can find that SIngapore is about 15 miles from Balam island - they are separated by the Singapore Strait. So saying it "crossed international boundaries" is about as impressive as saying something went from Detroit Michigan to Windsor Canada. (Well, a little more impressive as Detroit/Windsor only involves crossing a river.)
Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
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So the issue is teaching/incentivizing shoe recycling overseas, why do we have corporations shipping us waste products to foreign countries?
We used to ship CRT monitors overseas to be "recycled", which typically meant creating a toxic environment poisoning the locals as we all upgraded to cool flat screens here in the US. If instead of breaking down all the monitors, some were cherry-picked and used in poor schools in third-world nations,there would still likely have been people complaining about being lied
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They crossed international boundaries when it left the us on a cargo ship, then travelled all the way across the Pacific Ocean, that 15 mile hop across the Singapore Strait is meaningless.
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Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, the order is: Reuse, Repair, Recycle. Each step down is far worse for the environment than the previous one.
They're promising they'll do the worst option, and then they do the best option. They're doing an equivalent of promising to give a dollar for protecting the environment, and they give a hundred.
How the fuck do you take someone promising something, doing something far better and turn it into "fraud"?
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How much of those shoes are actually being reused?
to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.
or
"a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills."
If its only a very small percentage, you are shipping a large amount of shoes across the world, with all the pollution associated with that to get a few shoes reused then it could well be better to throw out those shoes. This also applies to old clothes https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].
If people think that their shoes are actually being recycled but instead being shipped over to another country to be mainly be thrown out then they are less likely to be co
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It is fraud simply because they said they'd do something specific but did something else!
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Was this said "we're going to do something good for the environment, so we're going recycle", or was it "we're going to recycle even if better options are available?"
If latter, then it's fraud. If former, you have to be pants on the head level of retarded, or alternatively a modern Green to think this fraud.
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For sure re-selling these shoes so they can be reused is MUCH better than re
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First of all, recycling plastics is pretty much the worst option for CO2 emissions. The order for plastics is reuse - repair - burn - landfill - recycle. This is because the amount of separation work followed by energy needed to heat the properly separated plastic mass is typically far higher then making new plastics. You'll emit far more CO2 trying to recycle plastic than making new. Landfilling is better because it sequesters carbon in plastics. Burning is better because it means it generates energy inste
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Why does Singapore need to import used shoes from halfway around the globe to grind up for playground mats? What are the locals doing with their old shoes?
It is amazing, eco-warriors are more concerned about used shoes getting ground up while still usable, and ignoring the insane idea of exporting shoe-waste to Singapore to make playground ground cover.
Why can't we recycle American shoes on American soil for use in American playgrounds?
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Because labor costs would be too high in the USA.
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I think you need to have some quiet time away from your computer to evaluate why you hold international boundaries so highly.
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You're right, and while Dow did, in fact, send all of the shoes to that Indonesian recyler, that someon working for that recycler decided that it was a sin to shred a pair of shoes that were in better condition than their own, and rightly so.
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When you run a charity donation programme, you are compelled to use the funds or donations for the purpose you pledged when collecting the goods. Say you promised to use donated clothes to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, then you cannot use them to help the victims of California Dixie wildfire. If you don't keep up to promises then it's fraud. This general rule is necessary to keep the public trust in charities.
Here Dow did worse. In the example Katrina vs Dixie, it's just a fraud on paper, the intent wo
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Say you promised to use donated clothes to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, then you cannot use them to help the victims of California Dixie wildfire. If you don't keep up to promises then it's fraud. This general rule is necessary to keep the public trust in charities.
What if the money raised from the shoes sold off into the resale market was used to pay for the recycling of the shoes that couldn't be reused?
If I donate my old clothes to Hurricane Katrina, but they are found unsuitable (condition, size, style) what is the charity's responsibility to live up to their promise? Can they sell off the unusable clothes and in-turn use tha money from the sale to help, say, a food kitchen in the stricken area?
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So the problem, really, is that the Indonesians aren't recycling their shoes, and shipping them our old shoes does nothing to fix that problem.
Why can't we recycle the shoes domestically, then possibly escort playground material to Indonesia?
Why can't Indonesians be educated/encouraged to recycle their old shoes for playground material.
Shipping dirty sneakers half-way around the world is non-sensical.
Getting upset because someone might extend the useful life of something you won't use any more is also non-s
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"Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor for a nonprofit working on waste pollution, tells Reuters that when vendors ultimately receive the non-recycled shoes, "a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills.""
So not all the shoes are being reused or recycled.
Also, this greenwashing makes it so people like you, who should know better and be more skeptical, give them a pass on their actions, and don't call for any additional laws governing the cond
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Let's say the government has a pool of money to use to encourage the development of new recycling programs and technology. They use some of that money to give tax breaks to companies that do that research and run those programs. Dow claims it's running such a program and takes the money while turning around and contracting out to a shady "recycling" company that dumps the shoes in SE Asia, where they will probably wind up in a landfill. Meanwhile another smaller company that actually needs the money but
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Who is being defrauded?
Depends on the legal angle. If they are getting a subsidy for it: the government / tax payer. If they are advertising that they do this, the buyer.
Who is being harmed?
Not relevant. Fraud is not an act involving physical injury.
Perhaps they do recycle shoes, but only after taking out those still good enough to be reused, which is sensible and responsible.
If that's what they do then they should advertise as such. Otherwise it is fraudulent behaviour.
I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.
We know. You have a long standing history of shilling for corporations and not giving a fuck about anything else. Honestly at this point Slashdot readers would be outright disappointed if you expressed any out
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which makes it frsud.
Who is being defrauded?
Who is being harmed?
Perhaps they do recycle shoes, but only after taking out those still good enough to be reused, which is sensible and responsible.
I am feeling a distinct lack of outrage about this.
I mostly agree with the sentiment, though I'm not sure what you think is happening is actually happening.
First, Indonesia doesn't like all the 2nd hand goods coming in since it undercuts any local shoe & garment industry they try to develop. Which is admittedly wasteful and maybe not economically justified, but it is illegal in Indonesia.
Second, I don't think they're just retrieving the good shoes. I think the recycler is yanking out all the shoes, reselling them, and vendors are tossing the unsellable
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Are these people donating the shoes to help the environment?
If yes, then repairing them is doing something better than recycling. And reusing them is something far better than recycling.
You entire rage is "why didn't you do something far worse as you promised, instead of doing something much better". Why?
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We promised to do something good for the environment.
We did something far better for the environment.
Clueless person: "FRAUD!"
No wonder rageclicks sell.
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We did something far better for the environment.
Did they, though? In this case the shoes were found in a pile for sale. It's possible that they stay on that pile for a year, and then get burned. So ultimately, they are not reused, or recycled.
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2nd that. Seems silly to complain that a better form of recycling is being used.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's lying but it's like giving money to charity instead of burning it, the mitigating factor is over-looked.
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But they give the money to charity or pocket them?
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There are no "mitigating factors" being overlooked. They lie to people to solicit donations, then slap a price tag on donated items and resell for profit. It's precisely the OPPOSITE of "giving money to charity instead of burning it", it is taking money from a charity and spending it, and worse, spending it without regard to environmental damage.
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Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:2)
It is likely not Dow that was lying but the recycler they hired.
There are plenty of stories about people buying a used computer that was supposed to have the data drives destroyed by the recycler, instead it ends up on eBay still controlled by some company MDM, either completely unusable but in some cases people have been able to access and recover data.
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"It is likely not Dow that was lying but the recycler they hired."
Sure, because large corporations know how to commit fraud and avoid consequences.
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Except that reusing something is considered a subset of recycling.
If you were told that a bottle is being recycled and found out that it is being cleaned and reused as-is, wouldn't you consider that a perfect form of recycling it? After all, you are using 100% of the components of the bottle with minimal energy added to the system to clean it, versus the much higher energy to melt the bottle and reform it.
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Recycling in general is a very advertised word, but very bad for the environment compared to alternatives. It's only better than land filling (and in some cases burning). In general, the chain of "environmentally friendly applications" goes like this:
First reuse. If you can't reuse, repair then reuse. If you can't reuse and can't repair, then recycle or burn (depending on product set). If you can't reuse, repair or recycle/burn, landfill.
Recycling is just one small subset of environmentally friendly product
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It's not, and it still deprives the advertised charity. It's the George Santos charity for kid's playgrounds. Seems silly to complain that the puppies got a better home, right?
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Capone was nailed for tax evasion. We can't put trackers in everything Dow does. They said they'll recycle the shoes into running tracks and playgrounds. If they lie about this, an issue where the truth is relatively easily found out and there isn't really a reason not to tell the truth, they are not trustworthy at all.
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I hope Reuters used at least a few shoes that weren't reusable (e.g. huge holes in the sole, etc), to check whether they are recycling correctly.
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The whole recycling idea was bullshit from the start. It takes much more energy to sort the donated sneakers and then to separate and grind up the usable parts of the shoes than just starting with fresh rubber that hasn't been turned into a product before.
In other words, it was greenwashing from the get go.
It's outright nefarious on the dow side of the equation and pure stupidity and personal greenwashing on the side of the donors.
And this is pretty much the sorry state of humanity right now.
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I'm not really shilling for an oil company here, but reuse is always a greener option than recycling, they did the right thing here.
Why destroy a perfectly functional pair of shoes?
From the summary: when vendors ultimately receive the non-recycled shoes, "a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills."
PS: If the shoes are "perfectly functional" then maybe the first world consumer should still be wearing them.
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I'm not really shilling for an oil company here, but reuse is always a greener option than recycling, they did the right thing here.
Why destroy a perfectly functional pair of shoes?
You're right and also not seeing the full picture. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in that order. However these weren't reused yet, so you cannot call this a success. A large portion of second hand cloths gets donated, sits on a shelf for months before ultimately being discarded. The 3rd world is absolutely awash, drowning in our left over crap and the overwhelming majority of it ends unworn on a scrap heap.
Recycling programs are abysmal, and few companies and countries do it well (sometimes companies only do it wel
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You're right and also not seeing the full picture. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in that order.
This is the Nth time I've posted this idea: the order is not correct. It should be Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, in that order. Reusing something just once reduces your consumption of that resource by 50%. That simple act has a far, far greater result-for-effort-expended than the other two parts of the mantra. It is, as we have seen historically with the 1974 oil crisis, not possible to reduce consumption very far even with massive, government-level effort. Recycling, is not very effective, with rare excepti
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Not consuming something in the the first place saves 100%. If you can find an alternative to using a plastic cup for an application you reduce that potential plastic use by 100%. If you use the plastic cup and then reuse it, you save 50% as you say. If you recycle it, it's maybe 0-20%, depending on where you are, they type of plastic, and the recycling facilities available.
That's why reduce is first. It is the most reliable way to cut down pollution and consumption of non-renewables. There are many pla
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Reusing something just once reduces your consumption of that resource by 50%.
Not using something reduces your consumption by 100%. So the order is correct as I posted it.
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The status quo for bins of used shoes is that the few that are still functional are resold in poor places. The rest are disposed of in an environmentally catastrophic way.
If the good ones were selected and donated and the rest disposed of properly, there wouldn't be any problem here. Instead, the entire lot is exported to a poor place, the few useful things are resold, and the rest ar
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Reuters won't even stick up for their reporters who got gunned down by a US Army helicopter.
That they are shaming a recycling company for prioritizing reuse is totally fine if they get "a scoop". GOTCHA, DOW!
Buncha low-brow morons who are happy to destroy a recycling company to feel smug.
What assholes.
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As low-brow as the author of this comment? Dontcha feel smug, bill?
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I'm not really shilling for an oil company here, but reuse is always a greener option than recycling, they did the right thing here. Why destroy a perfectly functional pair of shoes?
Tell me what Dow is claiming in business deductions and tax writeoffs by engaging in Green "recycling" programs first. Then I'll try and grasp your weak-ass logic here.
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I'm not really shilling for an oil company here, but reuse is always a greener option than recycling, they did the right thing here. Why destroy a perfectly functional pair of shoes?
Publicity.
Yes, re-use is good. But it isn't as media ready and happy happy as "We're thinking of the children!" and showing happy happy little ones cheeks aglow and dressed like proper children should be and livin' their best life, in the playground.
Whereas showing some poor impoverished kid getting a pair of used sneakers? People might get that confused with a Save the Children foundation commercial. Nowhere near as happy happy.
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It is amazing that it's cheaper to repurpose used shoes in another country than to recycle these shoes but I have (literally) seen a similar thing happen with USA clothing being donated to charities that end up being sold at a market town in Africa.
Business as usual.
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That was my first reaction as well. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You're SUPPOSED to try to reuse before you recycle.
Companies being companies, i'd imagine a bean-counter somewhere decided this was a slightly more profitable way to go, but still, whether or not they had the right reason, they did the right thing.
Also, if they would have publicly said "Hey, when you turn in your shoes to us to take care of, you can either select to grind them up to make a bike path, OR you can select to ship them overseas to get
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It's not just greener, it's far greener.
Remember, the order is: Reuse, Repair, Recycle. Depending on product, it can be from several times worse going down a single step to easily ten times.
They did something much better than they promised, then faux green clueless reporters decided that they're going to shame them for it. They should do much worse for the planet. Because fuck the planet, we have rage clicks from ignorant morons to farm.
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From the SUMMARY: "Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor for a nonprofit working on waste pollution, tells Reuters that when vendors ultimately receive the non-recycled shoes, "a very small percentage is actually reusable. It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills.""
A few pairs making it to be reused instead of burned or dumped in a river is pretty bad, and it's insane greenwashing either way.
The problem, as other people point out, is the fraud. The government fails to make laws that p
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I suspect that re-use is being demonized.
In a different market (surplus mechanical/electrical equipment) most of the "Pick-n-pull" shops selling used gear have been shut down by manufacturers. They walk in, offer the store owner a check for everything (no holding back the valuable stuff). They close the store and send everything to the metal grinder.
We can't have people building up control panels with used IP66 indicator lamps they picked up for $5 each when McMaster-Carr sells them for $150 a piece.
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Re: Reuse is better than recycle (Score:4, Informative)
That IS recycled. (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck.
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No, it's "reused" technically. But more specifically it is "unused" currently in a state only marginally better than being on a landfill. A large portion of cloths end up in a recycling wearhouse, get transferred to some second hand store shelf, and then a very significant portion of it ends up on a refuse pile after 6 months.
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The shoes go to "resellers" but that doesn't mean they get resold. Only a portion of donated shoes are suitable for resale, and only a portion of those actually sell. The majority of these shoes end up incinerated or in landfills.
DW did a documentary on it recently, but YouTube's search is so shitty I can't readily find it. In the clothes they tracked, most of them ended up dumped in illegal landfills in eastern Europe by organized crime.
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Re: That IS recycled. (Score:3)
If you are lucky it's going to end up as fuel in a power plant or cement kiln.
Re:That IS recycled. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong. Recycling includes re-use. Look it up.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
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Technically correct is the best kind of correct, except when you're confusing people.
We have the separate words "reuse" and "recycle" for specific reasons. Using the word "recycle" to mean "reuse" is misleading in most contexts, because the assumption is that something is being broken down into its components (chemical or otherwise) and those components used to make something new.
Re:That IS recycled. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Recycling includes re-use. Look it up.
The great thing about dictionaries is there's so many to use from. Oxford does not consider reusing something to be "recycling".
https://www.oxfordlearnersdict... [oxfordlear...naries.com]
They are two different words for a reason. The word recycle implies some form of treatment is applied, the term reuse implies you take what was used and without further action use it again.
But funny enough for Mirriam-Webster if you follow their definition of reuse they seem to imply that you need to do something before you can reuse something "after reclaiming or reprocessing". So it's not actually the term "recycle" they are using incorrectly, but rather the term "reuse" they are confusing with recycling.
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Agreed.
Unfortunately it seems this time it was specifically stated by them "they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks."
They did not say anything about other forms of reuse, including selling usable stuff for a presumable profit. I think if they stated that recycle includes making playgrounds / running tracks and selling stuff for reuse (and maybe even donate the profit to a suitable charity), noone will have anything to say about it.
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the shoe was reused, but in the end it would end up either in a landfill or tossed along the side of the road.
If the shoe were not reused, the buyer would still need shoes, so another shoe would have to be manufactured, consuming more resources. Then that shoe would be discarded.
The net effect is that reuse is better than recycling.
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but in the end it would end up either in a landfill or tossed along the side of the road
Or donated to DOW where they could grind them up and make a playground.
Old shoes never die... (Score:3)
Recycling in general (Score:2)
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Recycling is a fine idea but it has a curious side effect amongst many middle class folk -the act is used as a justification for doing lots of bad environmental stuff, like taking business or pleasure flights, or driving gas guzzlers.
Sorta like when the well-to-do buy carbon offsets from people living in poor countries so they can continue to jet around everywhere while pretending that they're being environmentally responsible.
Im pretty sure.. (Score:2)
they were still recycled (Score:4, Interesting)
Y'all are mad that they recycled them into shoes.
Another Press Scammy Hit Piece??? (Score:2, Insightful)
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OK show us the shoes you donated for recycling. My guess is you donated 10 pair of barely used shoes instead of really worn out shoes. Who in their right mind would turn a great pair of shoes into a ground up rubber mat? Repair, reuse, repurpose is far better than recycle. Recycling costs the most energy and gets the least benefit. They should be applauding Dow and Singapore resellers for doing the right thing. Maybe Dow emphasised the wrong part of the process for un-reuseable shoes grinding and using in rubber mats. Instead of boasting about repair, reuse and repurpose which they should boast about.
Totally agree. These shoes were good enough to be resold and reused by someone who needed them. They can always be ground up when they really reach the end of their useful life.
But ... but ... (Score:2)
Give a shit, or stop pretending. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Dow says it will remove Yok Impex from its project next week, according to the article. But it also adds that Dow "did not explain why a used-clothing exporter had been involved" in its recycling program," and Dow and its partners "did not explain what procedures were in place to ensure that donated shoes weren't exported, diverted for resale or pilfered from bins."
If Dow doesn't want to give an honest answer, then perhaps start asking Common F. Sense.
Catch a company red handed and THAT is the best you can do? Ask the fucking criminal if they've committed a crime instead of using the evidence? Seriously?
Make then donate (from Executive bonus coffers) ten times what they (allegedly) committed to with "recycling" programs and the benefits they claim in business deductions and tax write offs. Until Greed starts paying for the corruption, it will grow bigger and bigger
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"Dow says it will remove Yok Impex from its project next week, according to the article. But it also adds that Dow "did not explain why a used-clothing exporter had been involved" in its recycling program," and Dow and its partners "did not explain what procedures were in place to ensure that donated shoes weren't exported, diverted for resale or pilfered from bins."
If Dow doesn't want to give an honest answer, then perhaps start asking Common F. Sense.
Catch a company red handed and THAT is the best you can do? Ask the fucking criminal if they've committed a crime instead of using the evidence? Seriously?
Make then donate (from Executive bonus coffers) ten times what they (allegedly) committed to with "recycling" programs and the benefits they claim in business deductions and tax write offs. Until Greed starts paying for the corruption, it will grow bigger and bigger. I'm not sure how people don't see that when you reward this behavior by ignoring it. Writing articles about it isn't the "eye-opener". Doing something about it, is. Recycling is turning into a bigger scam than climate change ever could.
So the shoes in good shape were made available for sale to people who need them. What's the problem?
Re-use is much more environmental than recycling.
Donate incineration plants to Indonesia (Score:2)
Low developed countries getting access to more decent incineration plants would do more for their plastic problems than all the recycling plans put together.
It doesn't have to be worth much for it to be worth their time to sort it for electricity generation, why burn it in an open pit if you can get some money for it?
So what? Why not resell them if they are usable? (Score:2)
I'm not seeing what the problem is here. Maybe all the sneakers they put trackers in were in good enough condition to resell. What's wrong with that? Isn't it better to utilize the rest of their useful life than to grind them down?
Just because better-off people no longer want the, doesn't mean their useful life is over. Resell them cheap to someone who needs them. To me this is the program working BETTER than advertised, not worse.
WHAT?!? (Score:2)
A large, multinational corporation LYING to the public so that they can continue to deliver increased value to their shareholders? I'M SHOCKED, I tell ya
they were technically being recycled (Score:3)
Maybe the shoes were not going where they said they would, but they were being recycled. I see nothing wrong with reusing them if they are still in good shape.
Re: (Score:2)
It is long past time for an environmental surcharge
And who would pay for this, other than their customers? No one.
Re: (Score:3)
That's exactly who should be paying, the customers. Nobody else should be paying because you bought something shitty
Re: (Score:2)
The idea is to level the playing field by internalizing externalized costs of unsustainable products. Put the cost of dealing with waste where it is created: short-lived wasteful products which can't be repaired or recycled.
Re: (Score:2)
And who would pay for this, other than their customers? No one.
What's your point? The OP was completely right. Its time much of the west does away with this absurd and destructive obsession with low cost driving wasteful practices. Place a surcharge on it. Raise the product's cost by 100% if you need to. At least that way we may stop throwing perfectly cloths in the donation bin while chasing stupid trends.
Re: (Score:2)
And who would pay for this, other than their customers? No one.
What's your point? The OP was completely right. Its time much of the west does away with this absurd and destructive obsession with low cost driving wasteful practices. Place a surcharge on it. Raise the product's cost by 100% if you need to. At least that way we may stop throwing perfectly cloths in the donation bin while chasing stupid trends.
When GDP is reliant upon "chasing stupid trends", it becomes rather hard for anyone to curtail that idiocy.
Solve for that point first before assuming others are an answer.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only are American corporations the biggest welfare queens on the planet, in terms of not paying their fair share of taxes, (an avoidance device most likely employed here), they’re also the biggest polluters on the planet, with nowhere to properly dispose of all of their waste. It is long past time for an environmental surcharge to combat their toxic excesses.
What you mean like a new employee tax?
(Just in case you needed to be reminded as to exactly how Greed N. Corruption would respond to that.)
Cut them some slack (Score:3)
They are, after all, running shoes.
Re: (Score:2)
At same point mega corp needs to stop growing because the really just produce content / shoes for the landfill.
Now translate that statement into the actual world. You mean Nike should just realize they've "made enough" and shut down production lines?
Let me know how a manufacturing company selling physical product exists after that. Now you know why fashion is a key component of a lot of production today. The waste created by that, is merely a side effect to them.