JogOn - Removing 1m pairs of running shoes from Landfill
Most great ideas are triggered by something. In my case, it was an article in the Guardian which claimed that it could take up to 1,000 years for a pair of running shoes to degrade in landfill. As a runner, or more appropriately a plodder, I started to wonder what provisions there were for solving this. The answer; none. At least none that made sense to me.
I deliberated about it for a time! actually, not that long. Long enough to drink a cup of coffee. I decided that I would try and do something about it. But If I was going to do it, it would need to be national, meaningful and scalable.
Today we have over 300 collection points in the UK and take receipt of 4-6 pallets of shoes every week. A surprising fact which has emerged, has been that over 90% of the shoes collected are good enough to be re-used. Today, JogOn supports a number of schools, charities and organisations across the UK and overseas. We even send some to HM Prisons in support of the rehabilitation teams.
The main reason for starting this though was to stop the “end of life” shoes from going into a whole in the ground for 1,000 years! To date, we have taken over 26 Tonnes from landfill and properly disposed of them.
Our end-of-life shoes currently are destroyed in a waste to energy plant. Effectively, they are incinerated to produce electricity. Although that is a great win, it is not where we want to end up. In the coming months we are introducing the UKs first light industrial plant which will shred the shoes and produce enough end product to put to a secondary use. This is a game changer in the running industry and I am looking forward to working with brands on how we tackle this issue.
In the meantime, there is work to be done! – we need to let people know that we’re here and ready to collect their unwanted running shoes. We have an amazing partnership with EVRi that allows anyone in the UK to send us 15Kg of weight (about 30 pairs of shoes) for £2. - that is an incredible deal!
Anyone reading this will probably assume I have done this all on my own, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The success of the JogOn campaign is down to some amazing people and amazing partners who have made the campaign their own and helped deliver the message. You know who you are!
Thank you
Tony Piedade