Barossa Sportspower takes steps to an environmentally friendly future.
PICTURED: Maddie Rohrlach (Sportspower) & Lisa Brown (Management Accountant and member of Barossa Co-op’s Environment & Sustainability Committee
As part of Barossa Co-op’s goal to strive for a more environmentally friendly community, Barossa Sportspower is now proudly part of TreadLightly, a national recycling initiative that takes unwanted shoes and active lifestyle footwear to give them new life.
The program is part of Sportspower’s wider commitment to take accountability for footwear waste in Australia and to drive a truly circular economy – turning old shoes into useful products that can be used on the shop floor they were originally sold on.
Once shoes are donated at a TreadLightly collection site, they are taken to a storage facility in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to be sorted.
From there, the recycler, Save Our Soles, process the shoes and cut them into pieces, where reusable components such as rubber, leather and fibres are extracted and turned into recycled crumb. The crumb is sent to TreadLightly’s brand partners and other companies and manufacturers to find it a new use, such as for sporting surfaces, playgrounds, and retail flooring.
Shoes can be deposited at Barossa Sportspower’s TreadLightly collection bin in-store.
Also a Havaianas stockist, Barossa Sportspower is also taking used Havaiana thongs as part of the brand’s recycling program. Havaianas thongs with rubber material can be dropped off at the store’s collection bin, and then taken to Havaiana’s recycling partners, TerraCycle, who will sort and dispose of the shoes to give them a second life.
“The Barossa Co-op Environment and Sustainability Committee has a committed focus to implementing waste reduction solutions both internal and making solutions available to local community. We encourage everyone to visit our Barossa Sportspower store or website and have a look at the list of shoes that can be recycled and placed in the collection bins.” Lisa Brown, Barossa Co-op Management Accountant and member of The Barossa Co-op Environment and Sustainability Committee said.
“Of the estimated 110 million shoes that are imported into Australia each year, only 1% are collected and recycled after use and the most common ways to dispose of shoes is through landfill or incinerated/ burned. Both current practices leach all sorts of toxins polluting our earth’s soil, air and water table. This impacts soil microbes, insects, all animals, the food we grow, the water we use and the air we breathe. Sustainability is a journey and the power to change the environment is in our hands and step by step, shoe by shoe we can work on protecting our environment where we can.”
