More Space Debris

It’s been established for a while that something had to be done about the growing number of space debris... man made space debris. I find it astonishing that after all these years, the course of action for taking care of a defective satellite is shooting it down. They say that destroying the satellite at such a low altitude will minimize the amount of generated space debris. I guess they assume that not much of the debris will “fly up”.
It is obviously not an environment friendly decision … but most probably the most cost efficient way of dealing with the problem, making sure nobody else will put their hands on the satellite.