Day 5: Steppin' Out.....

Working on my 100 Things Challenge by clearing out all my old shoes. Still working on what to do with them. Dress shoes can be donated to the local City Mission along with clothes. But, the sneakers and flipflops need to be recycled. My goal is not to throw anything away.

Recycle, reuse, repurpose, reinvent....

I did a little research online and discovered a great program that Nike has developed called Reuse-A-Shoe. Since 1990, they've collected more than 24 million pairs. What they do is grind down old shoes to use the rubber in synthetic sports fields and playing surfaces. There are three grind categories:

Nike Grind Rubber is made from the shoe's outsole. It's used in track surfaces, interlocking gym floors, and playground surfacing.
Nike Grind Foam is from the shoe's midsole. They use this as a cushion for outdoor basketball and tennis courts.
Nike Grind Upper is recycled from the fabric. They use this for cushioning pads on indoor volleyball and basketball courts.

Check out their site and you can see several interesting videos on recycling old shoes and find out how you can participate. They have programs for group collections as well as individual donations.

I found a shoe recycling directory: recycledrunners where you can find local and international drop off facilities.

Have you heard of soles4souls? Their mission is to affect as many lives as possible with the gift of shoes. They've collected more than 1 million pair of shoes for relief efforts such as the Asian Tsunami and hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Runtheplanet has a listing of worldwide shoe donation organizations.

Then, on to the flip-flops.....
Did you know that thousands of flip-flops wash up on the African shoreline every year creating an environmental disaster for the marine eco-system? An organization called UniqEco works with the locals to collect and recycle the rubber and then turn it into jewelry, baskets, rugs, and many more items.

I'm ready to send those flip-flops to Nairobi. How about you? Check out some of these sites and let me know what you think.