TreadLightly has taken the lead on recycling your old sports shoes

“Small steps can have a big impact” - the national recycling initiative that’s tackling Aussie sneakers

With 110 million shoes making their way to Australian shores each year, but only 1% collected and recycled after use,  the Australian Sporting Goods Association identified a major waste issue and developed a program specifically for recycling sports and active shoes.

This category of footwear (which includes thongs!) make up a quarter of all Aussie new shoes.

After use, they usually they end up in landfill where it is estimated they take more than 1000 years to decompose. Or Australians simply hold onto them, with wardrobes a mess of old runners sitting tangled and unused.

Shaun Bajada, Executive Director of the Australian Sporting Goods Association (ASGA), said: “Landfill is a major source of pollution. With shoes breaking down at a very slow rate, this is a huge problem for future generations.

“Latest reports show that in Australia alone, 20.5 million tonnes of waste make its way into landfill each year and TreadLightly’s own survey show that Aussies are hoarding over 100 million unused shoes, so every bit we can do to reduce this helps!”

ASGA's  program takes unwanted sports footwear and responsibly recycles them in Australia to give them a new life as anti-fatigue mats, as well as gym and retail flooring.

The solution was created when recycler Save Our Soles (SOS) began working closely with Nike in 2008 to recycle shoes. After reaching out to collaborate with ASGA, a 12-month pilot program in Victoria kicked off and collected over 100,000 shoes!

In August 2021, the pilot was deemed a success, ASGA received a grant through the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund (NPSIF) and later that year TreadLightly was born.

TreadLightly now has over 600 collection points across Australia and is still growing.

The shoes, which “are made of synthetic fabric, plastic, rubber and often a slice of ethylene vinyl acetate to be used as a shock-absorbent midsole” are first turned into recycled crumb before becoming gym products.

The program plans to expand their products for use in wider community initiatives, such as playground and basketball footing for schools and underprivileged community groups.

In 2022, TreadLightly ran a Back-to-School recycling drive challenging childcare centres, primary and secondary schools across Australia to recycle as many shoes as possible, with $12,000 worth of prizes donated by partners for winning schools.

With over 100 schools participating, the eight winning schools helped to recycle nearly 10,000 pairs of shoes, keeping over five tonnes of waste out of landfill which Bajada said was “an amazing result”.

“It was great to see so many schools get behind the initiative, coming up with their own creative ways to raise awareness and collect shoes to be recycled.

“We are passionate about helping children to understand the important role they can play in reducing our impact on the planet.

“Small steps can have a big impact when we work together.”

Bajada emphasised that manufacturers, retailers, and consumers all have a role to play in lowering our impact and contributing to a more circular economy.

“As consumers we need to stop the ‘take-make-dispose’ approach and start thinking about the simple things that we can do to lower our impact,” he said.

“TreadLightly is a really easy way to do your bit for the planet. And we believe that turning old shoes into useful products takes us one step closer to driving a truly circular economy.”
 

With an ambitious target set to recycle one million shoes by 2023, TreadLightly is growing at a tremendous rate, with nearly 600,000 pairs of shoes recycled and counting.

All material is collected, recycled and manufactured in Australia.

“Every month we’re increasing our volume of shoes recycled,” Bajada said. “We’ve gone from recycling 1,000 kgs per month to around 12,000 kgs per month. “We’ve still got a long way to go but as the program continues to grow and more consumers learn about shoe recycling, we look forward to ramping up our collections to recycle a record number of shoes over the year ahead.”

by Lucia Moon

When comes to recycling, we need to not only stay up to date, but look beyond our kerbside bins!