Nike Has Launched Its 20 Year'S Shoe Recycling Program For The First Time In China.

September 19th, 2005

This year is a summer holiday for students. A noticeable sign is displayed at the gate of Nike store in Youth Street shopping mall, Chaoyang District Youth Road, Beijing: old shoes are recycled.

A pair of old Nike brand shoes is worth 50 yuan of shoes when buying new shoes, not Nike.

The factory store, which was run by Nike, was launched in China.

This is an experimental environmental protection activity conducted by Nike in China.

"During the summer vacation, young students will have plenty of time to shop."

Huang Xiangyan, spokesman for Nike China, said Nike wanted to see whether young Chinese consumers were interested in sending their worn sneakers to recycling sites.

This is the first time that Nike has implemented its 20 years of shoe recycling plan in China.

Since 1990, Nike has launched the "old shoe recycling" program in the United States, named Reuse-A-Shoe, which is part of Nike global social responsibility program Nike Go.

Reuse-A-Shoe was extended to more than 200 Nike stores (factory stores) and some sporting goods stores and universities in 11 countries and regions in Canada, Japan and Australia in 1993.

But in these areas, Nike does not pay directly to consumers who submit old shoes, but offers discount coupons, vouchers and other concessions.

In the case of Nike Town in New York, shopkeepers set aside a special recycling bin in the store, giving each consumer a ten percent off coupon for their old shoes.

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In the past, due to the failure to implement the recycling plan, tens of thousands of sports shoes were mixed into the ordinary domestic waste every year and sent to the landfill for waste. After implementing the plan, Nike's statistics showed that by the end of 2008, Nike had recycled 21 million pairs of sneakers in the world, and now Nike can recycle about 2 million pairs of waste sports shoes every year in the United States.

At first, these recycled shoes were shipped back to the two Nike cooperative factories in the United States for dismantling and recycling.

The two factories are located in Memphis and the other in Tennessee.

Later, in Belgium, Nike found a factory that could process waste sports shoes for processing shoes from Europe.

The American factory in Memphis uses a technology called "slice-and-grind". Based on this technology, each pair of shoes will be cut into three pieces -- rubber outsole, foam midsole and fiber upper, which will then be sent to grinder and then purified.

The Belgian Mel Howard factory, which opened in 2005, first polished the shoes into powder, and then separated and processed the powder into different materials through a series of complex separators.

Although the processing technology is different, their use is the same. Those shoes have been dismantled and processed into three high quality Nike abrasives.

One is the Nike rubbing rubber made from the sole of the shoe. It is used for runway surface, gymnastic mat, playground surface and even new Nike products, such as Nike Pegasus or the outsole of Jordan XX3. It is also used in some decorations, such as buttons and zippers, and the other is the Nike lapping foam made from the sole of shoes. It can be used as the floor mat for outdoor basketball and tennis courts, and used in indoor soccer field. There is also a kind of Nike grinding fiber made of fabric upper of shoes, which is used for making cushion cushion in indoor plastic courts and wooden stadiums.

The processed raw materials were purchased by Nike company and donated to public sports foundation in remote areas and poor countries to build public sports facilities such as football field, basketball court, tennis court and plastic runway.

One of them is fielder football stadium in Douglas Park, Chicago.

The stadium, which is donated by Nike and the US football foundation, is made of Nike Grind material processed from Nike's old shoes. It has a high performance, low maintenance surface and is free for teenagers.

China also has a place donated by Nike, a sports park in Dongdan, Beijing, which is a football field turf, a rubber mat and a plastic track on the basketball court. All its raw materials are pported from the Nike factory in the United States. It costs 3 to 5 times the construction of the general stadium in China.

According to Nike's calculations, the construction of a standard soccer field requires 50 thousand to 75 thousand pairs of recycled sneakers (10 thousand to 20 thousand pairs of small five player soccer courts), 2500 for a basketball court or tennis court, and 75 thousand for a standard runway.

But before this year, Nike did not carry out this activity in China.

Because before Nike's sales in China were mostly represented by distributors, until the last two years, Nike began to increase the construction of Direct stores, which made it possible to carry out this activity.

At present, Nike China is making statistics on the number of sports shoes and evaluation activities in China, but it has not yet decided how to deal with the recycled sneakers, because there are no factories for processing these old shoes at present. As to where to send these shoes, Nike China is still consulting with its headquarters, hoping to come up with a solution soon, but it will definitely use these recycled shoes to build sports facilities.

Nike China also did not think whether it would continue to implement the old shoe recycling plan in the future.

In fact, Nike's shoes have been taken into consideration in the early days of design and manufacture, and they can be dismantled and recycled to the greatest extent in the future.

According to the Considered environmental design concept formulated by Nike in 2000 - reducing toxic substances, reducing waste and enhancing sustainability, all Nike brand footwear products will meet Nike's Considered environmental protection requirements before 2011.

Accordingly, in recent years, Nike has used a large number of environmentally-friendly materials such as organic cotton, recyclable polyester and environmental rubber in its new sports shoes, clothing and accessories. It has designed and manufactured Nike Trash Talk, Air Rejuven8 and a series of new products that conform to their environmental protection design concepts.

"In this case, no matter whether Nike recycls itself or other social companies recycle, it will not cause pollution."

Huang Xiangyan said.