Did you clean out your family's closets this January? If so, maybe you found some worn out tennis shoes or sneakers your kids have outgrown. A friend of ours is a running fanatic and told us about Recycled Runners.
Recycle your Sneakers
Don't throw those sneakers away! It turns out there are plenty of ways to recycle them and Recycled Runners can help you identify the best way to put them to reuse.
For example, if your shoes are still in decent condition, there are numerous domestic and international programs that will accept them and redistribute them to people in need. If your sneakers have seen much better days, they can be recycled and turned into sports surfaces like basketball courts and playgrounds.
Recycled Runners has organized domestic drop-off spots for donating sneakers into a map. They will keep adding to it as they learn of donation programs and as new ones emerge so check back if you don't see anything near you.
Now that you've responsibly gotten rid of your old shoes, your family may need new ones. Recycled Runners has teamed up with Zappos to donate 50% of the proceeds from shoe sales made through their site to charity. See more details here.
Originally posted by Carrie on Ohdeedoh.
Comments (4)
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Nike has a program where you can drop off running shoes at various locations (I took mine to City Sports in the Boston area) and they'll grind them up to make playing surfaces for parks... any shoes without metal parts will work. Organizing all that info onto a map is a great idea!
view SisterRae's profile
Recyeled Runners does seem like a great program! There are also others to choose from, depending on your location-- see here for more ideas.
view tinychoices's profile
I didn't have a drop off location in the Twin Cities, so I shipped mine to Nike (and they weren't Nikes). Sure, it cost me $5 in shipping and the CO2 to get it these, but I think it's still got to be less than the cost of letting the material go to waste.
view kate's profile
PS You can google to find where to send them, it's not obvious on their website.
PPS, this is an awesome map to have, can't wait until they have more locations in between the coasts!
view kate's profile