'Recycle your shoes, repave your way': from worn out sneakers to renewed play and sports areas

esosport
Type of organisation or company
Country
Italy
Language for original content
Key Area
Submitted by
ICESP
Start/End date
Ongoing
Yes
ICESP - Italian Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform
Esosport
Description

Esosport was founded in 2009, by a small group of avid sports people, wanting to find a better use for old sports shoes than simply being thrown away.
Indeed, once they have exhausted their support and performance potential, recycled sport shoes provide a secondary raw material with interesting characteristics for flooring in sports facilities.
Further down the road, Esosport has extended this concept to bicycle tyres or inner tubes, and tennis balls.


The conversion and recycling of these pieces of sport gear allows obtaining a granule similar to EPDM. The characteristics of this material are particularly interesting for sport facilities as it can replace and /or supplement the raw material used for the construction of anti-shock flooring. 

Through the GOGREEN – onlus Association, Esosport gives to the civil services free of charge secondary raw materials obtained as a result of the collection and subsequent recycling of sports materials.
Beneficiaries are the following projects: "Il Giardino di Betty", a playground for children, and "La Pista di Pietro", a 60m athletic track.

Main results

In 2017, thanks to the esosport project, about 10,000 kg of materials were removed from the landfill, of which approximately 4,000 kg of rubber granules were recovered for the construction of playgrounds and athletic tracks.