Green your feet

Tread softly by recycling the old and stepping into a new pair of eco-friendly shoes.

When it’s time for a new pair of shoes, breathe new life into your footwear selection with a pair of first-rate ecologically-conscious “green” shoes made using second-time-around recycled materials and natural materials of all kinds, in many different styles and sizes.

When you find a suitable way to reuse or recycle your old pair and find a charming new pair of eco-friendly kickers, you reduce new landfill deposits and help reduce the size of the “carbon footprint” you leave. These are just a few small steps you can take to make a positive impact on the planet.

With an array of brands and choices, the selection of “green” footwear has grown by leaps and bounds. You’ll take the switch to green in a confident stride with a variety of shoes that will complement any style. Whether you’re looking for some all-weather rugged hiking boots for hitting the trail, some sandals for those beach days or even more formal styles like a pair of men’s dress shoes or perhaps a pair of ladies’ stylish pumps, there’s a “green” shoe to fit you!

Shoes are often produced using “first materials,” which puts a drain on resources. From factory production to transportation, they leave a big “carbon footprint” trail behind them on their way to your feet. Certain types of shoes that are made from a variety of materials can be difficult to recycle, resulting in them landing in the garbage bin, further increasing their burden on the environment. Eco-conscious shoes fit the “green” bill because they are composed of recycled materials like recycled rubber and fabrics or other natural materials that need less intense processing and are therefore more earth-friendly.

Once you decide your old comfy worn-out sneakers are ready to be retired, think green by locating a running shoe recycling program in your area. Many areas have shoe-recycling drop-off centers while the “reuse-a-shoe” program offers a mail-in option, as well as information about organizing and starting up a shoe-recycling program in your community if you don’t already have one. Some programs turn running shoes into their favorite counterpart – an athletic-grade surface! Other programs reuse the shoes through charity organizations worldwide. Two good places to begin looking are Recycled Runners and National Recycling Coalition's Rescue-a-Shoe.

After you’ve found an eco-friendly way to dismiss your old shoes from service, the fun begins.

Recycled shoes often take other difficult-to-dispose-of items and turn them into useful ingredients to make a long-lasting, earth-friendly, foot-hugging shoe. For example, old automobile tires enjoy a comeback as part of the latest from Flat Tire Footwear. These green shoes will put the bounce in your step with their unique “crumb rubber” soles made from recycled tires. They’re cushy and comfortable and offer plenty of traction. The line includes men’s and women’s shoes in several styles including sandals, clogs and casual shoes. Many feature suede-leather uppers.

If you need durable, earth-friendly shoes for enjoying nature, the Patagonia Company offers a large variety of hiking shoes and boots for men and women that feature a significant percentage of recycled plastics and cork. They also offer trainers, flip-flops and two-in-one slip-ons, all of which come in very stylish earth tone colors.

If you like tennis shoes or bicycle shoes, Worn Again is an environmentally conscious British company that creates spiffy shoes with great attention to detail. Worn Again boasts products that are made from inner tubes, airline seats and other surprising materials.

If you need some suave dress shoes, Ecolution has designed some great “green” ones for men including hemp oxfords. They are naturally organic and come in black, brown and light tan.

If you feel like splurging, treat your feet to a pair of Beyond Skin pumps or heels. They are available in a wide variety of ultra stylish designs and are all made from earth- and animal-friendly materials.

The Zoe & Zac line by Payless Shoe Source features a naturally different assortment of women and girls’ summer shoes produced by using organic materials and recycled rubber.

The next time you shoe shop, go green with your footwear. The ground you walk on and future generations will thank you.

Banner paper boxes reused for fluorescent tubes

Here's a handy little something I do at work.

We print banners and posters on three-foot-wide HP paper. Each roll of paper comes in these long, narrow cardboard boxes.

One day, I got the bright idea to start keeping our fluorescent tubes in the boxes until they could be recycled. And it works great: there's a little plastic or paper tube in the box that kept the paper rolled up, and the lights slide right in.

Every once in a while, I take a stack of them to our drop-off site. "Reuse" comes before "recycle," and this is a handy way to reuse something so unique.

Wear sustainable shoes with Eco Sneaks

Looking to make a difference with your feet?

A company called Simple Shoes has developed the Eco Sneak, a sustainable pair of sneakers that "uses materials like recycled car tires, certified organic cotton, PET (think recycled plastic bottles), recycled bike tires, and hemp."

Simple Shoes uses the shoe box to make a statement, as well:

The box is made from 100% post consumer recycled paper and printed with soy-based inks. The shoes have foot forms made from 100% post consumer paper pulp inside them when they arrive in the box. This is the only other packaging that comes with the shoes. No plastic, no excess paper stuffed inside the shoes, nothing.

A new pair of Eco Sneaks will set you back $55-70.

Choosing a safe reusable water bottle.

According to Lifehacker, "Americans consume 28 billion single use bottles of water per year and roughly 80 percent of those end up in a landfill." And considering how much bottled water we drink, all the plastic takes up a lot of space...somewhere.

The Good Human addresses some of the bottled water concerns, including a list of the best reusable bottles you can buy. The worst are PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles - the same kind Aquafina, Coke, and other water, juice, and pop bottles come in.

The site concludes that the best kind of reusable water bottle is one made out of stainless steel:

Ideally, the best way to drink water on the go would be an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle, as they seem to exhibit the least amount of health concerns out of all the choices. Add in the fact that they can be used over and over again with no degradation and do not need to be recycled each time you use one, they really are the “green” choice. And since upwards of 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water in disguise, buying it seems like not only a health risk due to the plastic leaching possibilities, but also a wallet risk due to wasting money on something you already have at home!

What kind of water bottle do you use?

Recycling saves businesses money.

A little local news for you: The Saginaw News shows how going green can help business.

"Recycling and reducing waste should prove a no-brainer for business leaders because it impacts the bottom line, Duebbert said," and the article shows how up to one-third of waste comes from businesses, and how recyclable paper makes up the majority of that.

When a company goes green, side benefits include improved employee productivity as well as an improved standing among customers who also believe in recycling. Less waste means less cost for disposal, Duebbert said.

Nice to see a Michigan-based effort to get businesses to care more about waste management.

Recycling makes more sense than burning.

I wish I had the clear conscience of those who say burning our trash is the best method of disposal. But when I read facts like recycling a ton of paper saves two barrels of oil, or that recycling creates six times as many jobs as landfilling, I can't help but wonder if trash burners are thinking of America's best economic interests.

Burning trash in a barrel, as in days of old, may make our hearts and hands warm and fuzzy. The reality is, it's harmful to everything from our forests to our national fossil fuel consumption levels. In these days of $100-a-barrel oil, recycling seems the patriotic thing to do.

Maybe trash burners learned nothing from their Depressio-era relatives, or those who lived through World War II; they knew better than to let a scrap of metal or rubber go to waste. They thought long-term instead of short-term.

We're not making trash haulers rich by recycling. We're creating jobs, reducing government inolvement in how we handle our garbage, and improving the air we breathe. Who can argue against that?

The trash burning mindset is an old-fashioned one, one that is cherry-picked by those who support the county incinerator despite the evidence and benefits of recycling, and ignore the wisdom of our elders. They taught us to never let a thing go to waste. My grandma still recycles all her plastic bags and Cool Whip containers to reuse. She's taught me a lot. Maybe she needs to teach others.

In this age of disposable everything, there's a lot we could learn.


-by Dave Lawrence, Recycling Jackson VP

Whole Foods says 'BYOB'

Whole Foods won't say paper or plastic - they'll say bring your own.

That's thanks to their new "Bring your own bag" (or BYOB) program, outlined on their site here.

When you bring your own bag to any Whole Foods shopping location, they will give you a refund of 5 cents per bag. They also have their own canvass bags, as we've lauded before, available for the usual 99 cents.

But what about paper? Says Whole Foods:

We aren’t trying to settle the "paper vs. plastic" debate. We say "reuse!" instead. But when you don't reuse, we provide 100% recycled (and recyclable) paper bags.

Make my bag canvas.

The world is starting to hate plastic grocery and shopping bags - and for good reason. The things are slowly but surely taking over the earth.

Much buzz has sounded over the giant, Australian-sized plastic heap in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's a giant Atlantis of rubber ducks and plastic bags.

But just last week I noticed my favorite grocery store, Meijer (who is already doing pretty well environmentally), has provided canvas-style shopping bags for purchase. The price? Ninety-nine cents. The style? A snazzy royal blue and green.

I snatched three of them up, figuring that my $3 would help ease my conscience over using so many plastic bags over the years. That, and they make a pretty profound statement: in the checkout, there were a few shoppers who took notice of my new take-homes.

Meijer isn't alone. Local grocer Polly's Country Market, with locations from Chelsea to Adrian and everywhere in between, provides the sturdy shopping bags too, and also for 99 cents. It's a trend that includes the famous "I am not a plastic bag" bags from our friends in the East. People are eating them up.

This is a trend that we at Recycling Jackson couldn't be happier about. Just this weekend, while working at the site, I noticed people bringing their plastic recyclables wrapped in - what else? - plastic grocery bags. They don't take up as much room as, say, your Tide detergeant bottle. But add them all up together in one bundle, and you're talking about a big petroleum-based monster.

So do us all a favor: spend 99 cents a week and stock up on reusable bags. Just remember to bring them in each time you shop, and spread the word.

- by Dave Lawrence, RJ VP

Reuse is the best "R"

So says the folks over at Low End Mac.

And it could be true. If items are reused indefinitely, then there's no need for trashing or recycling. They stay out of the waste stream forever.

I'm an Apple Mac geek. I love Macintosh computers, new and old, and currently own and maintain an iBook G4, an original iMac G3 Bondi Blue, an original clamshell iBook G3, and two Mac SE/30s, as well as a Newton MessagePad 110 and video iPod. Thanks to Recycling Jackson, I was also able to restore a strawberry iMac G3 for a friend.

The author of the Low End Mac column, owner and operator of eRecycler Online, noted

We are a growing recycling company in Texas and believe firmly in reuse. Towards that end we run over 100,000 online auctions a year; the proceeds help support the more expensive aspects of responsible recycling.

That's something we've found at our e-waste drives: people turn in perfectly useable computer equipment. "Sometimes things die and can't be fixed, but I'd rather see an old usable Mac given a new home than stripped for recycling," says Dan over at Low End Mac. Thankfully eBay is full of old Mac and PC stuff, and there are ways you can save old electronics like iPods.

Recycling Jackson will gladly take your e-waste. But if there's a chance your computer is still good, give it to someone who needs it, or to someone who can't afford a new computer on their own.

In our use-and-throw-away culture, good things can be said about people who don't automatically hit the "delete" key on their e-waste.


by Dave Lawrence, RJ vice president