Sneakers

Recycle: There are a number of charities that send your used sneakers to impoverished places with little access to athletic shoes. Shoe4Africa collects running shoes, cleans them up and ships them to East Africa to encourage sport. The first pair of Shoe4Africa shoes to be donated back in 1995 went to Mark Wendot Yatich, then an unknown runner—he went on to win the Los Angeles Marathon. Another runner to get shoes that year was Japheth Kimutai, who three years later won the Commonwealth Games 800m gold medal.

Nike has a fantastic recycling program called Reuse-A-Shoe, which is working to close the loop on the life cycle of literally millions of pairs of old, worn-out, or otherwise unusable athletic shoe material. Nike collects worn-out athletic shoes of any brand, not just Nike, and recycles them into a material that is used to make new soccer and football fields, tennis and basketball courts, running tracks and playground surfaces around the world.