Shoe Recycling

Yesterday I found this pair of pretty good looking shoes in front of my door. But all plastic and of an unknown brand. To possibly sell but most likely bring to the recycle center.

But at closer look I found the crack in the sole of one of them. It goes quite deep and you can feel it from the inside.

Made me wonder, would they still be wearable for someone in a place where people are in need of everything, and how would they get there? Or could they be recycled?

Did some research and to my dissappointment shoe recycling is pretty nonexistent. Plastic and leather uppers can best be burnt as well as the rubber soles. As a matter of fact that is what happens to car tires.

Currently I have two pairs of totally worn-out shoes that I didn't want to claim my kilo reward for but still dump them in the textiles recycling bin instead of throwing them away. But even that seems to be useless. They'll just go to trash tomorrow.

For now I've decided to give the pair above the benefit of the doubt and claim my little reward for them. Even if later on people will send them to incineration. In the past seven months I gave them some crap but mostly hardly used and/or very fashionble textiles and shoes. Some maybe expensive. Just no big popular brands.

   

For that reason I did try to sell these. I thought I could make a couple of coins on at least intact Zaras and Bershkas. So far no luck. I'll send the whole lot together to recycle shop. I picked them up last March from the next corner.

I just hope that the previous owner of the lace boots thinks before buying cheap shoes again.