ReUSE A SHOE

One of my awesome roommates gave me this idea for today, involving both our favorite shoes, Converse and their ReUSE A SHOE program.

ReUSE A SHOE

Converse and Nike are coming together on this one and having people recycle their old athletic shoes to help make new basketball courts, playgrounds, and tracks. You can recycle your shoes at Converse stores, but they can only be athletic shoes, everything else can't be recycled into the new courts and playgrounds.

I think this is a great idea and way to lessen the amount of stuff in landfills.

This is how it works:

After shoes are dropped off, they are transported to facilities, where each shoe is cut into three slices – rubber outsole, foam midsole and fiber upper. These slices are then fed through grinders and purified. The result is three high-quality Nike Grind materials ready to be put back in the game:

• Nike Grind Rubber – made from the shoe’s outsole and used in track surfaces, interlocking gym flooring tiles and playground surfaces.
• Nike Grind Foam – made from the shoe’s midsole and used as cushion for outdoor basketball and tennis courts, as well as futsal fields.
• Nike Grind Fiber – made from the shoe’s fabric upper and used in the creation of cushioning pads for facilities like indoor synthetic courts and wood courts.

To create these surfaces, Converse partners with Nike and top-quality surfacing companies, providing them with Nike Grind material and working together to develop innovative sports surfaces.

What do you think about that? Wouldn't it be awesome to know that your shoes could be a part of the surface of the next playground in your neighborhood? Talk about a way to be a part of a cause!