Did you know that the average American owns an estimated 250 pairs of shoes over a lifetime? Do you remember yours? What happened when they got tired or you got tired of them?
They were probably thrown “away,” that place that doesn’t even exist. Out of your house is one thing, but trash never goes away, it gets relocated – landfill, roadside, ocean – it goes somewhere.
Sneaker Impact is the brainchild of Moe Hachem, an environmentalist and businessman whose mission is to keep sneakers out of dumps and move them right along to where they’re needed.
Community clubs and paid workers organized more than a million pairs of shoes last year, just in Miami. Sneakers are cleaned, sorted, and sold in bundles of 200 pairs to various countries where they’re needed, appreciated, and affordably resold.
Sneakers that are way beat up are field dressed into foam, fabric and rubber, then repurposed and sold to manufacturers for floor mats, playground surfaces, carpet padding, insulation.
Chicago’s Working Bikes does this with bicycles.
Pretty cool – two major methods of transportation that keep on keeping on.