Nearly two decades ago, Nike began looking for a way to reduce the company’s environmental footprint and reduce the amount of shoes that ended up in landfills.  In the early 1990’s, Nike established a very cool program called Reuse-A-Shoe as a way of promoting social responsibility.   Basically they take back used running shoes (any brand), separate them and turn them into a product they call Nike Grind.

Nike Grind includes three types of raw materials made from recycled athletic shoes and manufacturing by-products: rubber from the outsole, foam from the midsole and fabric from the upper shoe. These materials are ground up and used by select companies in sport and playground surfaces, as well as in numerous Nike apparel, footwear and equipment products. For example, Nike ACG developed a range of apparel trim and accessories including snaps, buttons and zipper pulls that are made from 50% to 100% Nike Grind material.  A basketball court can use materials from 2,500 pairs of shoes.  A running track can use material from 75,000 pairs of shoes.

Nike first started by collecting athletic shoes at key retail locations and shortly thereafter teamed up with the National Recycling Coalition to establish shoe collections in communities across the country. Reuse-A-Shoe stands as one of Nike’s longest-running environmental community programs and is an integral part of the company’s goal of closing the loop on its manufacturing process and promoting social responsibility.  More than 1.5 million pairs of post-consumer shoes are collected for recycling each year. This is in addition to thousands of tons of manufacturing scrap material that is recycled. Since the program began, they’ve collected more than 21 million pairs of used athletic shoes.  Although Nike Grind is used in Canadian playground surfaces, there are no drop-off locations as yet.  They are however throughout the US.

I suppose in a perfect eco-friendly world we’d all wear shoes made from hemp and beeswax made locally.  Unfortunately, it’s just not possible.  I think it’s very cool whenever a company like Nike takes promoting social responsibility that much further and stands behind their product for the full life cycle.  The Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program means you can enjoy your new sneakers and not feel guilty about tossing your old ones providing you’re putting them back in circulation.

Kudos to Nike for being more than just a swoosh.