Stop! Look down at your shoes and consider what you will do when these shoes you are wearing are old, tattered, and falling apart. In other words, when the shoes are not able to be donated will you be adding them to our landfills? Most people answer yes to this question. Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program recycles shoes into a material used for athletic and playground surfaces.

Since the program was established in the 1990’s Nike has collected over 25 million pairs of used athletic shoes.  Nike states on the average more than “1.5 million shoes of post-consumer shoes are collected for recycling each year” and the collected shoes are then shredded along with their manufacturing scrap materials and turned into “Nike Grind”. The material is then used for running tracks, hoodie zippers, and soles of sneakers.

Taken directly from Nike’s website at http://www.nikereuseashoe.com/where-it-goes they list their four step collection and transformation process.

1. Drop ‘em off: Bring old athletic shoes to any Nike Reuse-A-Shoe recycling location or one of their events. Before taking shoes in Nike suggests viewing their recycling guidelines.

2. Ship’em out: Once the shoes have been collected they are shipped to one of these locations — Meerhout, Belgium and Memphis, Tennessee.

3. Grind ‘em up: Shoes are then sorted and processed into three types of raw material: rubber from the outsole, foam from the midsole and fabric fibers from the upper. They call these materials Nike Grind.

4. Put ‘em back in the game: Nike Grind then is used for athletic surfaces and pre-consumer material could even get used innew shoes and apparrel.

Not only does Nike offer a great solution to reusing worn athletic shoes by recycling the material, but they offer ways for people and organizations to host an event of shoe drive.

To become involved with the NikeRreuse-A-Shoe program visit  http://www.nikereuseashoe.com/drives.