Over 40,000 Shoes Collected in Cook County, Illinois
by Ashley Schiller
Published on May 28th, 2008
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Not even pouring rain stopped collection partners from bringing in over 40,000 shoes for reuse and recycling in Cook County, Illinois’ ninth athletic shoe drive, according to the Niles-Herald Spectator.
The Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) has partnered with Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program for years and has collected more than 61,000 shoes. Nike uses the shoes to make Nike Grind, a material used for new athletic sport courts, surfaces and fields.
The 26 partners throughout the country have together brought in more than 20 million pairs of athletic shoes. From the collected material, Nike has made more than 250 sport surfaces, according to the Nike Web site.
The program accepts all brands of athletic shoes. At the processing facility, shoes are ground up and separated into three useful materials which are used in making the sport surfaces: rubber from the outsole, foam from the midsole and fabric from the upper.
To find a local collector where you can take your old shoes, use Earth 911’s recycling locator.
