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by TheRealPomax 1216 days ago
It looks like most people didn't make it to this part of the article:

>In 2015, Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade introduced the Prohibition of the Import of Used Clothing regulation. The measure banned the import of used clothes and footwear over concerns about hygiene and the potential of these items to spread disease, as well as the need to protect the local textile industry.

Part of the problem here is that, yes, reuse is better than recycle, but these shoes were illegally sent into the second hand market of a country that DOW cannot be prosecuted in.

These shoes were guaranteed not first disinfected, they were just put in a bag, illegally shipped into India, unbagged, and then put on a shelf.

"Reduce, reuse, resell, recycle", but not if the step you decided to go with requires actively breaking the law and compromising the health and already health compromised billion-plus population country. Then you get articles like this, which quite rightly call out DOW over what they did.

1 comments

Yep, next up in the global effort to stave off deflation and maximize consumption: second hand goods are unsafe and need to be disinfected before resale, or better yet thrown out. Need your state certificate of resale legality and certification of disinfection or be subject to prosecution.

We ridicule it at the start, this is how this stuff eventually gets memed into existence. It's not fiction, it's already reality!

What diseases are spread through textiles, that need to be stopped at the cost of people not being able to afford to wear shoes on their feet? Not everyone can afford new shoes...

Indeed - if only DOW had worked with the Indian government to make this happen, given that they're a multi-billion-dollar company and could have easily done so. But no, instead they just decided to crime their way to getting rid of mostly fine used shoes.
A lot of consumer regulation is for the benefit of the middle class, who can afford things costing slightly more but are much more safety conscious. The poor generally get screwed by it.