Recycling can be a grind

Nike has taken recycling to the next level.  Who knew that they have been collecting a reusing old worn out athletic shoes since 1990?  The Nike Grind program is definitely not your average recycling program.  NikeGrind has collected, grinded, and reused over 25 Million old athletic shoes.  The shoes are torn into 3 parts the Outsole, Midsole, and the upper.

• Nike Grind Rubber, made from the shoe's outsole, is used in track surfaces, interlocking gym flooring tiles, playground surfacing and even new Nike products, such as the outsoles of the Nike Pegasus or the Jordan XX3. It’s also used in trim items like buttons and zipper pulls.
• Nike Grind Foam, made from the shoe's midsole, is used as a cushion for outdoor basketball and tennis courts, as well as futsal fields.
• Nike Grind Fiber, made from the shoe's fabric upper, is used in the creation of cushioning pads for facilities like indoor synthetic courts and wood courts. 

This is the part I think is cool.  Everlast sports surfacing has for over twenty years the been introducing new ways to reduce the nation’s landfills and reuse scrap tires to create durable, functional, and aesthetic surfacing solutions. All Everlast recycled rubber surfacing products contain Nike Grind. By using Nike Grind material in Everlast sports surfacing products, nearly 500,000 pounds of unused Nike footwear by-products and unwanted athletic shoes will be rescued from landfills each year.   

• One 36” car tire equals 20 square feet of rubber flooring.
• Did you know Everlast sports surfacing is in:
  • Gold’s Gym
  • 24 Hour Fitness
  • New York Yankee’s training facility
  • Anytime Fitness
  • University of Michigan training facility
  • US Naval Academy
  • Baltimore Raven’s training facility

• Everlast sports surfacing can contribute toward earning up to 8 LEED points.
• Each year, ECORE recycles over 80 million pounds of scrap tire rubber, saving over 1 million barrels of oil and keeping over 2,000 trailer loads of discarded tires out of our nation’s landfills.
• Recycling that many tires and saving over 1 million barrels of oil - that is equal to heating 600 homes for a year!
• By adding Nike Grind rubber to Everlast sports surfacing, we are diverting over 300,000 lbs. of rubber from landfills each year, which is equivalent to the outsoles from nearly 700,000 pairs of sneakers.
• It takes half a barrel of crude oil to produce the rubber for just one truck tire.
• Producing one pound of recycled rubber versus one pound of new rubber requires only 29% of the energy.
• Everlast with Nike Grind to assist specifiers by potentially contributing up to 8 points toward LEED certification. Everlast with Nike Grind is manufactured by ECORE International, North America’s largest user of scrap tire rubber.