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Successful Sneaker Collection
During April, local groups and individuals throughout town were busy collecting old, worn-out sneakers in response to the Greenwich Recycling Advisory Board's Earth Day plea to keep sneakers out of the garbage. And how those sneakers mounted up! A Greenwich Recycling truck was filled with more than 2,600 pairs! That's an average of 87 pairs a day!
The success of this project was the result of teamwork and ooperation by the community: collection bins were located at each firehouse and at Old Greenwich Tennis Academy; employees of RBS Greenwich Capital, Girl Scout troops and five schools organized their own sneaker drives. The results were consolidated during a one-day collection at Greenwich High School. With the help of several GHS student volunteers, hundreds of pairs of sneakers were added to the truck in just a few hours as additional donations poured in from recycling-conscious residents who brought anything from two to 20 pairs at a time.
This recycling initiative is made possible by Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program which grinds up sneakers of any brand to make athletic and playground surfaces. The final step was for sneakers to make their way to Willimantic, the central collection point for the state, where they are boxed up ready for Nike to truck to Minnesota for processing.
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