Give Your Old Gear New Life
Before you toss that pair of beat-up shoes or hole-ridden socks in the trash, bring them to us! That’s right. John’s Run/Walk Shop is happy to facilitate more sustainable options for your old running gear. Read on to learn about three organizations working toward a more circular life cycle for clothing and footwear.
Sneaker Impact
Too often, the lifecycle of a sneaker goes like this: Manufactured, sold, worn while running or walking, worn while mowing the lawn, thrown in the trash. Thanks to Sneaker Impact, however, that final step is changing.
Sneaker Impact works to refurbish or recycle gently used sneakers to keep them out of landfills. Here’s how it works: Drop-off locations such as John’s Run/Walk Shop collect your gently used sneakers. Sneaker Impact offers them at a fraction of their value to create small businesses in developing countries. Local merchants revive and resell those sneakers in their communities, providing affordable footwear in places where it’s not otherwise available.
Sneakers that are too worn out to resell are collected and ground into granules. Sneaker Impact uses AI technology to sort the granules into different material categories. The extracted materials are then used to craft new products.
Bring your used sneakers to either our Chevy Chase or Palomar store at any time so we can ship them to Sneaker Impact.
Smartwool 2nd Cut
Socks don’t need to go in the garbage either! Throughout April, we keep a Smartwool 2nd Cut Project bin at our Chevy Chase store. Bring in your old socks so Smartwool can turn them into new products such as the Second Cut Hike Sock.
Clean socks only (please). They prefer Merino wool socks, but they’ll accept socks of all materials, brands, colors, and sizes. Please bring loose socks only, nothing bundled or bagged.
At the end of April, we’ll send your sock donations to Smartwool where they’ll be ground up, turned into spool, and used to create new socks.
Recover Brands
If you’ve been participating in races for a few years, chances are you have at least one dresser drawer that’s overflowing with race T-shirts.
Starting with the 2024 Reforest 5K, we’ve started ordering race shirts from Recover. This apparel company uses 100% recycled or organic materials in all of their products.
They also use a HyperLocal supply chain with everything they make being entirely designed, recycled, knit, cut, sewn, made, and customized within a few-mile radius of local communities in Central America and the U.S. Southeast.
We set up a clothing collection bin at the Reforest 5K … thanks to everyone who helped fill it! We now have the bin at our Chevy Chase store and will continue bringing it to races. Feel free to contribute your old threads.
We’re constantly looking for ways to do our part in protecting the air we breathe and the ground we run on. One way we can all work toward that goal is by keeping as much of our running gear as possible out of landfills. Before tossing your shoes, socks, or shirts in the garbage, head to John’s Run/Walk Shop and give that old gear new life!