Kids Closets May Be Goldmine

When I recently took a glance at my school's weekly calendar it intrigued me to see that the Leaders Club had been able to collect 75 pairs of old sneakers for a recycling effort. Then when I saw that they'd been able to combine their efforts with those of schools around us to compile an impressive 1,374 pairs headed to the recycling bin I was determined to dig deeper. It turns out they were taking part in Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program that works to keep old, worn-out sneakers out of landfills and instead turns them into basketball courts, tennis courts, athletic fields and even running tracks. It's reducing waste, reducing the use of raw materials, and teaching kids about environmental responsibility at the same time. And with roughly 53,000,000 kids in grades K-12 in the US alone, it appears to me that there are certainly an awful lot of potential recycled sneakers hiding in kids closets across the country if someone in every school just takes the initiative to get with the program...