A new use for old shoes

The final drop-off point will be March 15 at the
Austintown Plaza.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — A dozen Austintown Girl Scouts are hoping their community service project will help protect the environment.

Girl Scout Troop 363, made up of girls in the fifth and sixth grades at Frank Ohl Intermediate, Austintown Middle School and St. Joseph Elementary in the Catholic Diocese, will be collecting athletic shoes the rest of February at several collection points to send to the shoe company Nike.

They will also hold one last collection from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 15 in the parking lot of the Austintown Plaza.

Nike runs a program called Reuse-A-Shoe, in which worn-out athletic shoes of any brand are separated into three types of material — rubber, foam and fabric upper — and ground up into a material Nike calls Nike Grind.

Nike Grind has been made from 20 million pairs of athletic shoes since 1993 and been used as an element in the production of more than 250 sports surfaces — such as basketball and tennis courts, running tracks, soccer fields, fitness flooring and playground safety surfacing.

The ground-up materials are used by for-profit companies such as FieldTurf and Atlas Track and Turf to make the surfaces. The fabric and foam grindings are also used as padding under hardwood surfaces and as part of the material used to make other types of synthetic athletic surfaces.

Nike also makes donations connected to Nike Grind.

In 2006, Nike announced it would contribute $1 million toward 10 synthetic soccer fields using Nike Grind in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and toward soccer equipment for 12 other cities, according to Hispanic PR Wire.

Jennifer Hykes, co-leader of Troop 363, said one of the members of the troop read about the program in a magazine.

“They thought this would be a good idea, and who doesn’t have old shoes?” she said.

After the last of the collections, the troop will drive the shoes to a Nike store at the Aurora Farms outlet. From there, the shoes will be forwarded to Nike in Oregon.

The group won’t be getting any funds in return for the athletic shoes. The payoff comes from protecting the environment, Hykes said.

“Millions of athletic shoes every year go into landfills, so it’s a way to keep them out,” she said.

The Reuse A Shoe program does not take shoes with metal or any type of cleat on them, and the shoes must be dry, Hykes said. Before the shoes will be taken to Aurora, the Girl Scouts will search through them for any shoes that can be used by Old North Church in Canfield to give to needy individuals.

Jim Petuch, director of the Mahoning County Solid Waste Management District (Green Team), said he supports the Reuse-A-Shoe program because it reduces the amount of rubber that needs to be made from virgin sources.

He said he doesn’t believe any organization has participated in the Reuse-A-Shoe program in the past because Nike previously had required that an organization collect an entire semitrailer load at a time.

“Any time you can reuse rubber, it’s good for the environment,” he said, adding that he plans to look into the program and try to provide a collection point after the Girl Scouts complete their project.

For more information, call Green Team educator Peg Flynn at (330) 740-2060.

runyan@vindy.com