Old Shoes Meant For Recycling End Up In Indonesia, Reuters Exposé Uncovers
A Reuters report on 26 Feb revealed that they found donated sports shoes meant for recycling in Indonesia when they were supposed to be for making jogging tracks and playgrounds.
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It transpired that Yok Impex, a subcontractor with Alba-WH in charge of collecting the shoes, had sorted “some” shoes and extracted them for resale, according to a joint statement by the project partners.
As such, Alba-WH said it has stopped collection bins from being sent to Yok Impex and will not be renewing its services.
The statement was jointly made by Dow, SportSG, B.T. Sports, Alba-WH, Decathlon, and Standard Chartered.
Reuters reporters find shoes for recycling being sold in Indonesia
At the time of the recycling drive, Reuters said in an article that it planted Bluetooth tracking devices on 11 used sports shoes in July last year and donated them.
“Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding,” according to the report.
However, reporters discovered later that almost all 11 pairs ended up in Indonesia, many of them apparently resold to illegal second-hand merchants in various cities there.
Source: Reuters
The import of secondhand clothes and footwear is illegal in Indonesia.
Following their findings, Reuters presented them to the partners, who replied on 22 Feb that Yok Impex will be removed from the project from 1 Mar onwards.
Supply chain lapses led to shoes being exported
In the statement addressing the exposé on Monday (27 Feb), the project partners explained that they were first informed about Reuter’s findings in January.
Alba-WH then led an investigation into the issue, which concluded on 31 Jan. They found that vulnerabilities in the supply chain had led to Yok Impex sorting some shoes for resale instead of recycling.
Yok Impex had been appointed to aggregate and sort the collection bins before sending them to Alba-WH’s warehouse for registering and weighing.
Source: Yok Impex on Facebook
“This was likely how the shoes tagged by Reuters — and possibly others — were extracted from the programme’s recycling bins at Yok Impex’s premises for reuse and exported to other countries,” they said.
It added that the investigations show this error occurred only at Yok Impex’s facility, and no other.
The project partners said they do not condone any unauthorised removal or export of shoes collected through the programme.
Additionally, Alba-WH has since stopped collection bins from being sent to Yok Impex’s premises, and will not be renewing Yok Impex’s services. They added they will also be taking further steps to tighten up the process chain based on their learning from the incident.
Project partners apologise to the public
The partners thanked Reuters for bringing the matter to them so that they could remedy the situation.
“We . . . hope that the public will continue to support this important and meaningful programme,” they said, adding that 10,000kg of used shoes has been recycled into infrastructure, such as Kallang Football Hub and a sports facility under construction in Jurong Town.
Reuters said in its report that it was unable to verify if the surfaces were built as the premises for both sites were cordoned off and under construction.
The partners also noted that the rubber granules will go into building jogging tracks, fitness corners, and playgrounds around Singapore.
“We wish to assure the public that we remain strongly committed to initiatives that protect our planet,” they concluded.
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Featured image adapted from ActiveSG.
