Innocent until proven guilty

This is an Internet forum, not a court of law.

Innocent until proven guilty is a standard that should be applied anywhere accusations are laid.

Many nasty things will occur if this is violated.

So you're judging them by their perceived level of caring and knowledge, even though you have no evidence of it, and the outcome was better than expected.

Sounds like hell?

I’m operating based on all available evidence in the article. I welcome any evidence to the contrary.

If “hell” means “telling the truth” or “acting with basic diligence,” well.

From the article - a subcontractor of a subcontractor exported them instead of shredding them. It's at least 3 levels removed from Dow, and likely the Singapore Gov't that did it, as these are Singaporean companies. And they picked them up from the bins, they weren't delivered them by someone else.

What level of diligence should Dow be doing here, especially since the outcome doesn't seem to be a bad one - if anything, a better one?

"None of the 11 pairs of footwear donated by Reuters were turned into exercise paths or kids’ parks in Singapore.

Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. The manager said his firm had been hired by a waste management company involved in the recycling program to retrieve shoes from the donation bins for delivery to that company’s local warehouse."

Indonesia bans the import of 2nd-hand clothing and footwear, specifically because a large proportion of it ends up in landfill or incinerators. That definitely would be a worse environmental outcome than being recycled into running track. I suspect the reason the shoes from the article did not go to landfill was probably because they were in unusually good condition.

> So you're judging them by their perceived level of caring and knowledge, even though you have no evidence of it, and the outcome was better than expected.

They solicited donations under false pretenses for PR points and then gave (or worse, sold) them to an exporter. If they want to be seen as trustworthy or given the benefit of the doubt...well they've had 126 years and consistently shown ethical behavior is not a company mantra.

>They solicited donations under false pretenses for PR points and then gave (or worse, sold) them to an exporter.

you don't know any of this, you're making it all up to please you misplaced sense of priorities. Perhaps they solicited the donations knowing that they would sell them to a recycler, and the recycler knew they could recover costs or even profit from selling much of this stream to flea markets, and recycle the rest. No false pretenses, not "or worse sold", just an "it's Uber Eats for old shoes" elevator pitch.

Dow's reaction to being confronted about this was to say they had stopped working with the company that managed to arrange for the shoes to be reused instead of chopped up. That seems fairly clear.