Key Points
- Australia imports 25 million sports shoes every year.
- Old shoes can be remade into new products including gym mats and flooring.
- Save Our Soles has already recycled more than 600,000 pairs of shoes.
Sweat-stained running shoes, double-pluggers that have blown out, work boots that smell so bad they could kill a cat at 20 paces.
They're pure gold to recyclers and Australians are being urged to surrender them.
As the nation looks towards creating a more sustainable, circular economy, more and more niche recycling programs are popping up and shoes are no exception.
The TreadLightly program, backed by the Australian Sporting Goods Association and recycler Save Our Soles, has already recycled more than 600,000 pairs of shoes.
But that's a drop in the ocean, with the association saying 25 million sports shoes are imported into Australia every year.
Australia's recycling problem
Australia's record when it comes to recycling shows it still has a long way to go.
Around 2.44 million of the 4.9 million tonnes of materials sent to landfill each year are either recyclable or compostable, according to environmental organisation Planet Ark. And only up to 18 per cent of the material in council-provided waste bins is recyclable, while just over half could be composted.
Plastic is the prime concern, with Australians using 3.5 million tonnes of it in the 2018-2019 financial year with a recycling rate of just 13 per cent, Planet Ark says.
The nation's major supermarkets have also been under fire, following the collapse of the REDCycle scheme.
Grocery giants Coles and Woolworths were partners in the REDcycle scheme which urged consumers to return plastic from supermarket and other household products for reuse.
REDcycle abruptly halted operations in November and has since admitted it was stockpiling plastic, with 32 stashes totalling 12,393 tonnes found in NSW, Victoria, and South Australia.
What products are old shoes being transformed into?
Australian Sporting Goods Association executive director Shaun Bajada says Australians should know eligible shoes - including most sports shoes, school shoes, thongs, slides and even gumboots, can be remade into new products including gym mats and flooring.
"Shoes can be recycled, no matter how dirty or over-worn they are."
A network of retailers across Australia act as collection points for old shoes, which are then sent to Save our Soles, which shreds them.
Various components such as metals and textile fluff are extracted and separated, with shoe waste blended with rubber from recycled tyres to make new products.
Save our Soles says all material is collected, recycled and manufactured in Australia.
