Old shoes make soft landings
-
Members of Girl Scout Troop 50139 collect used athletic shoes for recycling as part of a troop project at O'Hara Elementary School. Troop members, from left, are Diana Crookston, Ziya Xu, Nicole Garcia-Tunon, Clara McCormick, Laura Copeland, Maura Curry, Jane Jacobs, Cara Himmel, Tessa Burns and Aubrey Rice.
Share with others:
Got some old, smelly tennis shoes in the closet? The Fox Chapel Garden Club and the O'Hara Girl Scouts want them.
The groups hope to collect 1,000 pairs of shoes this month to ship to Nike for its Reuse-a-Shoe Program, in which shoes are ground up and used to make running tracks, rubberized athletic floors and playground surfaces.
The communitywide program, in its fourth year, strives to involve students, businesses and residents in the effort to keep used athletic shoes out of landfills.
About 40 brightly painted boxes have been placed throughout the community for the collection of the shoes until the end of October.
The boxes can be found in all Fox Chapel Area School District schools, local churches, the Fox Chapel Borough Building, Shady Side Academy, Boyd Community Center and local health clubs.
Susie Williams was co-chairwoman of the Fox Chapel Garden Club's conservation committee in 2007 when she heard about the shoe-recycling program.
"We wanted to do something with recycling that also involved the kids in the community, and fall is a perfect time when they go back to school and people are buying new shoes for fall sports," Mrs. Williams said.
Sandy Garcia-Tunon is leader of Girl Scout Junior Troop 50139, which has 11 fourth- and fifth-graders involved in the project.
"They loved doing it last year when they were Brownies, and they voted to do it again this year," she said. "Community service is a huge part of the Girl Scouts and giving back is one thing we always encourage.
"They learn a lot about recycling, which they study in school, too," she said. "And it gives them a sense that we don't have to just throw everything in the trash."
The Girl Scouts take posters into school classrooms and speak to their classmates about the project. The girls also learned the importance of teamwork, Mrs. Garcia-Tunon said, as they collected mountains of shoes and worked with the Garden Club members to pack boxes for shipping.
Nike accepts all types of athletic shoes, except those with cleats or large metal parts. The shoes are slit and ground and sorted into hard rubber for running tracks and soft rubber for playground mats. The canvas and leather upper parts go into a layer that is used for shock protection on basketball courts.
Nike began the Reuse-a-Shoe program in 1993 and said it has recycled 20 million pairs of shoes into material used in 250 sports surfaces.
Recycled shoes are part of the rubber floor in the wellness area of the new PNC YMCA Downtown, according to Richard Perallo, vice president of facilities for the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh.
Mrs. Williams says it costs the garden club about $800 a year to ship the shoes to Nike on the West Coast. That comes out to about 75 cents a pair of shoes, she said.
The club has been awarded a National Garden Club Federation Award for the tennis shoe program.
First Published October 14, 2010 12:00 am
