Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! My current job does nothing specifically for Earth Day but we do have a year round soda can recycling bin/system that we participate in. We all have plastic recycling bins under our desks for white paper only. We do a lot of paper recycling. When I worked part time for Disney they were very big into recycling. Environmentality! That was the catch phrase. We did many recycling things at Disney. I wore one of my Disney environmentality cast pins to work today and just about eveyone had no clue that it was Earth Day. Surely they would have heard about it on the news , if they were not aware.

What can we do to recycle shoes? Many things! I have not recycled any shoes in the past but it is something I will consider in the future.

ReUse a Shoe

Reuse-A-Shoe collects, slices, and grinds up used (any brand) and defective (Nike only) athletic shoes to make Nike Grind material, which is then used in sports surfaces. Since its inception in 1993, the Reuse-A-Shoe program has recycled more than 13 million pairs of shoes, and has helped donate over 100 athletic courts, tracks, fields and playground surfaces to communities around the world. Nike Grind material from the shoes collected in the pilot year of the Reuse-A-Shoe program with the National Recycling Coalition will be allocated to Nike's licensees - FieldTurf, Rebound Ace, Atlas Track and Connor.

Reuse-A-Shoe is an integral part of Nike's new NikeGO initiative launched in the fall of 2002 to increase physical activity among youth ages 9-15-and give them the means to do it. Programs include the NikeGO Fund, NikeGO After School program, NikeGO Girls program, Reuse-A-Shoe, Bowerman Track Program and numerous field/court and product donations. Through NikeGO, thousands of youth will be encouraged to discover the joy of movement and physical activity in an effort to help lead healthier lives. For more information please visit:

Nike Reuse a Shoe
NikeGO

Don't throw away those old running or aerobic shoes. Donate them to One World Running. This was a program that was started in 1986 by a group of runners in Colorado. They send new or near news shoes to Africa along with school supplies and medical supplies and food. They take shoec and of course money donations. $195 will buy about 50 pairs of shoes for children in subsaharan africa. That amount will buy double the shoes in Haiti and Central America. Read more and and make donations to this program here. And that is not all!

Over in London there is the program called Shoe Friends where schools are paid to recycle kids shoes. Shoe Friends is part of the bigger LMB London Ltd recycling program.

Lastly, if you loose a shoe and have the one foot left, do not throw that one shoe away. It can be donated to The National Odd Shoe Exchange. This program benefits peopleel with feet that are 2 different sizes in addition to amputees and people with handicaps or special needs. This program was started in Missouri in 1943 by Ruth Feldman for polio victims. More on the history here.

So while we wear out our beloved shoes on a daily basis... once we are done or they are done in (worn down heels)...never forget that they will always have a purpose. If they are not too worn and still have some life in them, they can still be used to benefits others. They can still be worn again or melted down into roads or other rubber products that will benefit our environment.

Happy Earth Day!

What I do is kick them in the pants with a diamond buckled shoe!
~~Aileen Mehle~~