I’ve always wanted to be the perfect recycler. Recently, I had some terribly worn hiking boots and wanted to recycle them.
I did some online research and found out that recycling your shoes is, indeed, possible. I went to www.soles4souls.org and found out that this great group of people will take gently worn footwear to give to those persons who are less fortunate and would love to walk in your shoes.
Says the group: “Send us your shoes! We want the leftovers from your closet. People across North America are cleaning out their closets and shipping their gently worn shoes to one of our warehouse facilities.”
Soles4Souls has two warehouse facilities:
Soles4Souls, Inc.
315 Airport Road
Roanoke, AL 36274
Soles4Souls, Inc.
Foreign Trade Zone #89
6620 Escondido Street
Las Vegas, Nevada 89119
Here at Freedom Press our employees are gathering their gently worn shoes to give to this group, along with a donation to help with their freight costs. I might not be able to get rid of my hiking boots so easily since they are too worn, but we do have some baby and children’s shoes around our home that our kids have grown out of and that would be just perfect to send along. It is a neat feeling to know that soon a child will be very excited about their new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sneakers.
Soles4Souls
Toll-Free Phone:Â (866) 521-SHOE
Fax: 615-391-5730
Email: Info@Soles4Souls.org
For athletic shoes that are more than ‘gently worn’, Nike has a great program of converting worn-out athletic footwear into sports surfaces. In their dual commitments to reducing waste and helping children to be more active, they take worn out athletic shoes (of any brand), and grind their specific parts into materials that can be used to make new sports surfaces. To date, they have donated more than 150 sports surfaces for indoor and outdoor basketball courts, tennis courts, tracks, weight rooms, and playground surfacing. How exciting to think that your favorite tennis shoes might be converted into a tennis court at a YMCA or local park, helping many more people to enjoy the sport-so much better than adding to the landfill!
To donate your well-used athletic shoes, drop them off at the nearest Nike drop-off location (see website for details) or ship them directly to:
Nike Recycling Center
c/o NikeGO Places
26755 SW 95th
Wilsonville, OR 97070
http://www.nrc-recycle.org/reuseashoe.aspx
Be sure to listen to David Steinman’s radio program here at Ecology Radio or at WebTalk Radio. To learn more about becoming a Green Patriot visit www.greenpatriot.us. You can also subscribe to this column via RSS.
