Green Living

Experts who know about such things tell active folks to get a new pair of athletic shoes at least once a year or every 600 miles. If you’re a serious runner or player, it’s even more frequent than that. (Read more on how to know when to replace yours here. That’s a whole lot of inactive tennies going to the landfill every year.

Here’s where Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program comes in: it rescues millions of shoes of all brands to turn them into sports surfaces for kids-playgrounds, basketball courts and more. It’s a full circle kind of thing.

You can take part by organizing a shoe drive with your neighborhood, school, workplace or place of worship, and then finding the nearest drop-off center or mailing them to Nike directly. Find out where to send those old kicks packing here. Here in L.A., the Niketown on Wilshire accepts shoes – just drop them in the bin or find a cashier who’ll take them off your hands. Shoes can be any brand, so long as they don’t have any metal (like eyelets) or spikes. Essentially your run of the mill sneakers are what they’re looking for. If you happen to live in Burbank, you can also drop yours off at the Burbank Recycle Center.

By recycling your shoes, you’ll be diverting waste while making playgrounds and courts possible for more kids to get moving on.

NikeTown Los Angeles is located at 9560 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills CA 90212. Phone: (310) 275-9998.