Kickstart: A shoe recycling project gets off on the wrong foot

A high-profile program to recycle materials from used sneakers into running tracks, playgrounds and sports fields is facing new questions after reporters from Reuters tracked donated shoes to a second-hand market in Indonesia

The program, backed by Dow Inc. and the Singapore government, was intended to harvest the shoes' elastomers and give them a different life. Reuters reporters in Singapore placed 11 sneakers in donation bins, but outfitted them first with a Bluetooth tracker hidden inside the sole. But none of the shoes ended up in the recycling stream. One pair ended up at a second-hand market in Indonesia where Reuters found it.

"Reuters tracked the 11 pairs of shoes over a six-month period," Reuters said in its Feb. 25 story. "All the footwear was placed in different donation barrels around Singapore between July 14 and Sept. 9 of last year. While the sample was small, the fact that none of these shoes made it to a Singapore recycling facility underscores weaknesses in the system."

Reuters said it presented its findings to Dow, a Midland, Mich., chemical giant, in January. Dow and its partners told Reuters Feb. 22 that it had removed one of the companies that was supposed to collect shoes as a result of its investigation.

"The project partners do not condone any unauthorized removal or export of shoes collected through this program and remain committed to safeguarding the integrity of the collection and recycle process," Dow told Reuters for its story.

Most mentions of bottled water and the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment have been about how local residents were encouraged to drink bottled water until their wells were tested.

But it turns out there's another connection that could impact people far beyond the small Southern Ohio town.

Creekside Springs LLC bottles water in Salineville, Ohio, in Columbiana County — 25 miles from the derailment site. Some of that water, sold under the Acadia Spring brand as well as store private labels, has been available for sale, the Philadelphia Inquirer writes.

While some bottles were pulled from shelves, the company says it has done third-party testing to ensure the safety of anything bottled after the Feb. 3 train accident that released the PVC feedstock vinyl chloride monomer.

Today and Wednesday, Plastics News will announce the winners of its biggest annual awards at its 2023 Executive Forum in Clearwater Beach, Fla. If you're not attending the event, though, you can still get the scoop by making sure you subscribe to our breaking news emails to be alerted once the winners are named. (Click the link or go to the "news" tab at the top of the main page, select "newsletters" and sign up if you don't already get them.)

The Best Places to Work in the plastics industry will be announced tonight while our Chief Financial Officer award will be presented Wednesday afternoon.

The Processor of the Year will be honored Wednesday evening along with Hoffer Plastics Corp., winner of the PN Sustained Excellence Award.

You can read more on this year's Processor of the Year finalists, — Medbio LLC, Radius Packaging, Redline Plastics LLC and Teel Plastics LLC — here to prepare.