A local company has teamed up with Vancouver鈥檚 park board to turn recycled shoes into playgrounds.
Vancouver-based Native Shoes announced last week a new partnership with the 麻豆传媒映画Park Board that will see the company鈥檚 worn out shoes re-purposed into safety flooring for new playgrounds.
President Kyle Housman said the company is aiming to help with the construction of 30 playgrounds over the next five years.
Started in 麻豆传媒映画in 2009, the company makes 鈥渂east free鈥� footwear 鈥� no animal products are used in any part of the production of the shoes 鈥� and with a new initiative, the Remix Project, the company is aiming to give its worn out shoes a second chance at life.
鈥淚t started as an internal personal project of one of our employees,鈥� Housman said, adding that the employee first figured out how to grind down the shoes by watching YouTube videos.
鈥淥nce he figured out how to do that and build the grinder, the idea was taken to the whole office and put to employees what could be done with the ground down bits of shoes,鈥� Housman said.
The winning idea? Playground flooring.
鈥淭his initiative is special 鈥� giving back to the 麻豆传媒映画community, where Native Shoes was born and calls home,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e look forward to working with the 麻豆传媒映画Park Board to identify areas that would benefit most from playgrounds where communities can gather to keep it lite and have fun.鈥�
Native Shoes approached the park board with the idea in the spring of 2017, said Lehran Hache, a landscape architect with 麻豆传媒映画Park Board.
鈥淚 thought it was a great initiative and wanted to support their idea, so helped put them in touch with a local company Marathon Surfaces to test their product to make sure it would meet all safety and durability testing requirements,鈥� she said in an email. 鈥淟uckily Marathon was happy to oblige and the ground-up Native Shoes passed all tests.鈥�
Construction recently began on a new playground at China Creek North Park. The existing playground needs replacing, and the new playground will be the first in the city to have safety flooring made from the recycled Native Shoes.
The company is still looking for used, worn out shoes to be used in the flooring for the China Creek North playground. It has a goal of recycling 10,000 pairs of shoes by the end of the year; about 6,000 have already been collected, and Native is offering a 10 per cent discount on a new pair shoes for every pair dropped off at its flagship store in Gastown (14 Water St.).
@JessicaEKerr
