Last time I went shopping I was pleasantly surprised to find an outdoor doormat made out of recycled footwear. Our household often has kid shoes that are beyond donation and need recycling, so it had me intrigued. If I’m finding recycled shoe products at my local Costco, surely that means there’s a shoe recycling program I can take worn out items to, right? Here’s what I found out.
The door mat I purchased is made by Apache Mills and uses material from Nike’s recycling program called Nike Grind. Nike re-uses manufacturing off cuts, as well as collected end-of-life shoes to make products like dumbbells, door matts, work gloves and basketball and tennis court surfaces.
I looked into where I could maybe take shoes back to participate in Nike’s recycling program. It was tough to find any direct information on their website about where to take end-of-life shoes. There are no Nike outlet stores in Saskatchewan so I had a family member check at the Nike store in the West Edmonton Mall in person to see if they had a collection bin, but they did not. From what I can tell, it looks like it’s more available in the US and Europe than here.
I also checked into other companies, to see if they had take-back or recycling programs. Sadly, the results were pretty thin. There are lots of options for donating shoes that are still usable, but almost nothing in terms of actual recycling.
Asics does make a limited edition model called the Nimbus Mira which is designed to be taken apart for recycling and can be returned to TerraCycle at no cost for material recovery. It’s a neat concept, but at $200/pair (on sale) and only available in a weird limey-yellow, they aren’t exactly an affordable every day option.
Adidas created a similar product called the Futurecraft Loop shoe. It is a prototype shoe designed for better recycling, but only a small test batch was made that went out to influencers. They have collected the used shoes to test their recyclability, but there isn’t a widely available version yet.
Puma has gone a different route, attempting to make a completely compostable shoe called the ReSuede. It, however, is only available in Europe.
The only option I could find for actually recycling shoes in Canada was TerraCycle. Starting at $253 CAD you can get a box (of unspecified dimensions) to fill with shoes and return to them for recycling. They posted a short video to their facebook that shows the process they use for sorting, grinding and separating the materials.
So, where does that leave me, and my family’s worn out shoes? Well, definitely glad that my husband and I buy shoes that are likely to last. My favorite pair of leather boots are at least six years old and still going strong. I am glad to see that companies are taking circular economy principles seriously and investing in research and development to make it happen. If I lived in Europe I could access any number of shoe collection/recycling programs like EsoSport, FastFeetGrinded, or Nike Grind. Given my limited options here, I think I’ll do a little further research into Terracycle’s option and see if I can justify the cost.
