Recycling Your Feet

As a runner, I go through 3-5 pairs of running shoes a year. I try and wear the old ones to work or around the house but there comes a point where I have 5 or six pairs just lying around. Although they may no longer be good for running they’re good for something. Here are a few great recycling ideas for your shoes, either how to make good use of them or to how to make some new ones out of recycled material.

If there is one thing in this world that there is plenty of, it is plastic bags. And this young lady took her crochet skills and made the finest pair of sandals that can be built with the catchings of a Wal-Mart fence

Meet the girl who made them

 

Your local city has you dividing up your recyclable materials into little bins only to have a guy come by and dump them into one truck. Then they go through and pick through them and keep the stuff that’s worth recycling and throw the rest in the dump. The one thing they don’t take is one of the most useful, the soles of your shoes. They easily can be made into thousands of products including the obvious, more shoes.

Shoes make some of the best planters you’ll find. They drain well and hold the perfect amount of dirt to grow a nice flower. I’ve planted up one pair of my daughters shoes each year and have her plant up her favorite plant in each. Both the plants and my daughter are growing up so fast.

 

Necessity is the mother of invention. 3rd world countries often have a lack of shoes. Ideally you would donate your shoes to a charity that will distribute them but most seem to go to Africa leaving South America to come up with these cool shoes. They’re made of old tires and seat-belts.

 

 

Nike has a fantastic program called Reuse a shoe. Athletic shoes (not just Nike) are broken into three parts. The fabric top, the foam, and the rubber sole. Then are then ground into the “Nike Grind” and made into athletic surfaces. It takes roughly 2500 shoes to make a basketball court but can take up to 75,000 shoes to make a full 1/4 track surface. Ironic, running with my new shoes on my old shoes.