SportSG, Dow apologise for shoe-recycling lapse, say process chain ‘vulnerabilities’ caused it

USED sport shoes donated for a recycling programme involving national sports agency Sport Singapore (SportSG) and US petrochemical giant Dow ended up in Indonesian shops and other places, due to “vulnerabilities in the process chain” involving a subcontractor.

Yok Impex, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter which was engaged by the programme’s appointed collection partner Alba W&H Smart City (Alba-WH), had aggregated the donated shoes in parallel with its own sorting activities. 

That’s how “some shoes” ended up being extracted for resale, instead of being turned into material for building sports facilities such as jogging tracks and playgrounds, as was the programme’s intention. 

Partners behind the project, including SportSG, Dow and Alba-WH, said these as they apologised to the public for the lapse in a joint response to the media on Monday (Feb 27), two days after an investigative piece by Reuters made waves.

The news agency, which planted trackers in the shoes it donated, found that nearly all 11 pairs of footwear it gave ended up in the hands of Yok Impex, and were later moved to Indonesia, adding to a flood of illegal second-hand clothing pouring into the country.

In the statement, the partners thanked Reuters for flagging the matter to them last month and distanced themselves from the revelations, saying they “do not condone any unauthorised removal or export of shoes collected through this programme”.

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They also pointed out that their investigations, which concluded on Jan 31, could attest to the error occurring “only at Yok Impex’s facility, and no other”. 

What happened

Circumstances directly leading to the collected shoes not being sent for recycling were laid out in the statement.

They said Alba-WH – responsible for collecting shoes from close to 300 collection bins island-wide – had subcontracted bin collection in selected parts of Singapore to Yok Impex, in its capacity as an aggregator for recyclables and reusables, in January 2022.

Therefore, the bins were sorted at Yok Impex’s premises and then sent to Alba-WH’s warehouse for registering and weighing, before being delivered to BT Sports’ grinding facility to convert the shoes to granules for use as building materials.

The compromise took place at the aggregation phase, since Yok Impex had sorted the shoes it collected from the bins “in parallel” with its own sorting activities, the partners said.

“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 in the statement.

Since the revelations, they said Alba-WH has stopped collection bins from being sent to Yok Impex’s premises, and will not be renewing the subcontractor’s services. 

The partners will also take further steps to “tighten up the process chain based on our learning from this incident”, they said, adding: “We have learnt from this incident and hope that the public will continue to support this important and meaningful programme.”

To date, 10,000 kg of used shoes have been recycled into infrastructure, such as Kallang Football Hub and a sport facility under construction in Jurong Town. 

There are still plans to use the rubber granules for jogging tracks, fitness corners and playgrounds around Singapore, the partners stated.