[deathanatos]

> 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 reusable,” Shah told Reuters. “It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills.”

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Yeah I don't think anyone would be too upset if they plucked out the 10% of shoes that are in good-enough condition to actually resell in Indonesia, before grinding the rest up to make sports tracks.

The issue is that it seems like all the shoes were sent to Indonesia, regardless of reusability, and they turned a blind eye to what happened to them after that.

[smugma]

“They said it’s not uncommon to throw out half the shoes they receive because the footwear is not good enough to sell.”

Apparently it may be closer to half than 10%.

And protectionism in Indonesia makes it illegal to import used shoes because of “hygiene”.

I’m not absolving Dow, but there was a lot to get angry about in the article.

[jessaustin]

Why believe the shoe seller? Perhaps half of the shoes appear usable and are sold as such, but most of those quickly disintegrate when worn. After all there are plenty of people in Singapore who will happily buy used and usable shoes. Anything that falls through this sieve to be exported is probably trash, which the Indonesians well know. It is reasonable for them to reject imports of which 1% are unusable, let alone 50%.

[notpushkin]

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

[mannykannot]

Because neither Dow nor the Singaporean government are interested in recycling them once they have been able to dump them in Indonesia? This appears to be just a greenwashing scheme which coincidentally reuses a small fraction of the garbage stream.

[sp332]

That would take actual resources.