Reuse-A-Shoe, Nike

Nike’s goal is to make recycling athletic shoes just as common as recycling household waste like plastic, glass, paper and cardboard which has become second nature for many people around the world. Nike operate a sustainable, closed-loop business, which recycles waste from different stages of their operations, from factories to transportation and eventually products at the end of their life, back into new Nike products or as materials for sport’s surfaces. Worn-out athletic shoes are broken down into three components: rubber, foam and fabric, and ground down into materials that can be reused as surface materials for track, basketball courts, and playgrounds. Over 25 million shoes have been recycled since 1990.

There are over 300 Nike Reuse-A-Shoe bins available in locations around the United States, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The Reuse-A-Shoe programme has provided recycled material to hundreds of sport and playground surfacing projects donated by Nike's community investment programmes in dozens of places around the world. Through the Bowerman Track Renovation Programme they also provide matching cash grants to community-based, youth-oriented organizations that seek to refurbish or construct running tracks. Textile and manufacturing companies need to give more emphasis to eliminating and recycling waste and Nike’s re-use of waste footwear materials for playground surfacing is a good example of what can be achieved.