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Comment by driggs | Hacker News Reader

I came here to post the exact same sentiment and the ordered phrase "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

Yes, it's bad that this was advertised as a specific recycling program and involved parties knowingly or unknowingly diverged from that stated plan.

But from a global resource consumption perspective, it's far preferable to re-use good shoes (which also reduces the production of new shoes) than to recycle them for recovered material (which is lossy in terms of energy and materials).

The same argument about shoes may not apply to the specifics of say e-waste - where harmful materials, rare materials, or electrical efficiency come into play - but in the case of this article, we should be happy that usable shoes are being put on feet rather than shredded and chemically decomposed.

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From the article:

>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.

Those are mostly nonsense reasons.

> who said such cast-offs pose a public health risk

Obviously phony.

> undercut its local textile industry

Free stuff is better than having a local industry. The government can tax shoe wearers to pay the local industry to make more stuff or just relax.

> often pile more waste into its already bulging landfills.

That one is legit.

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”.

I mean, it is Dow Chemical…

That what I was thinking, at least it’s a step up from dumping it in the ocean. It seems people are having to relearn that we can’t trust these companies to actually do the right thing all over again, as if history didn’t exist.

So, better to throw decent shoes in the garbage than take a chance of being lied to.

But they aren't being "shredded and chemically decomposed" - they're being sent as "second-hand stuff" where the good items are reused, but the others are dumped or burned, and nothing is actually recycled. And of course, the reused ones are also dumped or burned, just later.

> But from a global resource consumption perspective, it's far preferable to re-use good shoes

But they were not good shoes. They had tracking devices put into them. Full stop.

Imagine putting tracking devices into children's shoes and then having them "reused" like this.

Yes, reuse is great. And if that's what they said they were going to do, awesome. But that's not what happened here, and exposes a very real problem.

You can put a tracking device in anything and give it to a goodwill right now. This feels like a very strange angle to take. Especially when these shoes traveled accross countries.

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