I’ve Finally Found it!

I just knew knew knew that this existed.

I’ve kept like 6 pairs of junky old shoes for almost 10 years now because I had heard somewhere that someone will turn them into tennis courts.  I could never again find where I read that until now.  On reference from the Huffington Post, I finally found the Nike program that recycles old athletic shoes into outdoor surfaces.

They don’t have a ton of drop off locations, and sending them to the facility in Ohio doesn’t seem that appealing, but since I have the convenience of living in NYC, I’ll make sure to stop by the Nike store with my bag o’ old kicks in the near future.

Whole Foods Goes in Right Direction But Trips and Falls

Whole Foods will eliminate free plastic bags from their checkout lines by Earth Day. Instead of giving out those backs that end up blown around on the street, in parks, and wherever the storm-water goes, they will give out only “100% recycled” brown paper bags.

I like the effort, but if they were really serious about it they would charge customers for each bag like Ikea does. Ikea charges $.05, although I like $.25 myself (I think it is a better incentive). Whole Foods is still not getting around the fact that a free resource will be consumed above its social cost.

Additionally, the new paper bags are called 100% recycled, with no mention of post-consumer content. PCC is the ONLY thing important. It signifies that this paper has been recycled instead of thrown away. The percent of recycled content is often arbitrary and sometimes necessary for industrial paper production, ie. certain papers must be “recycled” in their processing, and are “recycled” without ever leaving the factory. Always look for the post consumer content on the label, not recycled content.