If you run for any amount of time and you wanna be conscious about "How much of waste you're producing with the number of shoes you have?" You realize you're going through shoes like water and throwing out tons. You might be wondering yourself "What can I do with these shoes? Can I do anything with these shoes?"
Well, I'm Jesse Funk and in today's episode of Runner's High, I'm gonna give you three things you can actually do with those old running shoes.
You and I both have this problem, right? We get new pair of shoes, we got this old pair you can see I've got you know my finger coming through these.
They've been around on the block, they pile up you don't know what to do with them. This first tip, I'm gonna give you, I've actually made a suggestion of this before in my other shoe videos, so if you haven't seen those hit that button I guess it's over here the bottom right-hand corner of the video subscribe with the channels - stick around with me. I make a lot of suggestions about both shoes and just running a general how to be a great runner.
My first tip is simply, keep using those shoes you've had and you are accumulating in your closet. Now, it doesn't mean keep running in them. Once you've hit that 300 to 500 miles mark, again I talk about when you need to change your shoes in another video but once you fit that time were you need to change them stop burning them, you don't wanna do that anymore.
But, even though they're not good for running anymore they are probably still good to just walk around then.
It's still got plenty of padding for a lower impact activity like walking, so you can use them for that. I refer to these as booting them down thel ine and that's because there's several steps in the line here, right? So you have the running shoes, that's a brand new shoes still get all the padding, good to go then once that's you know kaput for running boot it down the line to walking. Walk in them and those will last a considerable matter of time.
Until they really gotten the point they are flattened then you boot them down the line once more and they become what we affectionately refer to as yard shoes. But this can be for mowing a lawn, doing house projects anything were you gonna get dirty something more you know the quality of shoe is not as important as just having something covering your foot so it doesn't get dirty. You boot them all the way down to the line and until they’re no longer of use to you and then you pitch them.
Yes, you still end up throwing these out but you reducing the number of shoes that are getting thrown in a landfill because instead of buying new shoes for your everyday wear you're only buying shoes as your running shoes and then booting them down the line for other uses so you're not, you know creating that extra demand for more pairs to be produced.
See what I have to go through trying to get nice lighting on my face this is why you don't use backlit backgrounds but, we’ll ignore that for the time being you can deal with my kinda two face shadow thing going on here.
Anyway, tips two and three really kinda go together, they have two different objectives and that's why I separate them out but your thing what you're doing with your shoes you're gonna be very similar to them and that is between the two you're gonna be donating them, donating them into either get reused or to be recycled.
Now number two recycling, the most famous program here is gonna be Nike as reuse a shoe program and this is one of NIkes many efforts to take all of the things that they produce and help make a more sustainable environment. Because they know just like I know, we're producing all of these things and a lot things get thrown out especially shoes just like we talked about in the step one, they can get thrown out but really it you could take that step one and instead of throwing them out - send them to Nike for the reuse a shoe program.
Now that doesn't mean that you're gonna take your yard shoes and give them to somebody that's not what they’re after. What they do is take your shoes and grind them up then use those materials for other projects. More like surfaces rather than reusing those for another shoe.
The biggest thing here is that you're not going to take that shoe put in the landfill its gonna it use somewhere else and worst-case scenario if the material couldn't be used, and again I don't this about Nike this is just as kind of thinking about the situation, say you send it to Nike and they said 'You, you said that terrible shoes we can't do anything with them they still end up in the landfill but if you send them on they have the opportunity to become something else instead of definitely end up in landfill so donating them to a program is a good option.
The other option when you're donating your shoes is to find a company. often a not for profit that is going to take those shoes and actually reuse them so somebody else can put your shoes on and put them to work.
You’re booting them down the line, but to somebody else that needs the shoes. Now one of the programs I know about, that does this is a shoe crew water project. So they not only take your shoes and then boot them down the line for you either donating or selling them for a minimal price but their larger mission is to take that proceeds from that and help build sustainable water sources in developing countries.
Now if you're here with me watching this video most likely, not definitely but most likely you're country that we have great you know, infrastructures, water system we have plumbing, sewage sanitation, filtration systems all this kind of things is very easy to take for granted that water is pretty much everywhere we have access to clean water all the times and that is not the case in some developing countries.
So, groups like this the shoe crew water project they help take what would be our waste and then turn it into a larger mission of helping people have access to clean water both for sanitation purposes, hygiene, and for just plain drinking water.
Something very important as a runner, I hope you can understand how important water is to all of us even you know thinking about just in that small context that even as a human being but how important water is just for us to work out.
That is where I like to go to you know a company like that that has a larger mission that can do you know multiple things with our old shoes rather than just take them and making them into new surfaces. Perfectly fine that Nike wants to do that, this is just my personal bend, if you wanna check them out go to shoecrewwater.org you're gonna learn more about their particular mission.
Either way, no matter what you wanna do with your shoes they are your shoes but since you're here with me you’re obviously looking for something you can do with your old shoes, you've got multiple options and those are only two of the many options of where you can donate shoes once you're done with them.
So, if you actually wanna know more about "How we can make a sustainable future through all these things that we create like plastics, that are going to get wasted". I actually interviewed a smart athlete on the smart athlete podcast Madie Steer whose a world champion rower and she is studying nano plastics and the effects on the environment that those are having.
As well as our conversation kinda centers around where can we as individuals do, to reduce our waste, reduce our issues that we’re creating through all of these products. Something at the heart of what I think about on a daily basis pretty much since Solpri is a company. Solpri is a company that makes skincare products for athletes so we have a lot of plastic waste so that’s something I had and you know I think about so I talked to her about.
If you wanna see my conversation Madie somebody who's in the thick of it trying to figure out " What are the impacts? what can we do" that should be showing up on the screen here shortly just click on that. It should be the part two in the middle of that videos where we gonna start talking about the plastics so you jump somewhere in the middle.
As always hit that subscribe button stick around with me for more videos on running and I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runners High.