If you're looking to get rid of your old shoes, here's a sustainable way to do it.

Singapore's national sports agency SportSG, along with material science agency Dow, will be collecting used sports shoes to give them a new lease of life.

Many collection points

Collected shoes will be sent to a rubber grinding facility, where they will be converted into granular material.

This material will then be recycled into infrastructure materials used for sports facilities such as jogging tracks, playgrounds and fitness corners.

It can also be used for as fillers for gym mats and protection paddings.

There are currently numerous collection points islandwide, including 20 ActiveSG Sports Centres and five Decathlon stores.

These collections points were first made available from July 5.

Old shoes can also be dropped off at a number of primary, secondary schools, tertiary institutions and international schools, the full list of which can be viewed here. However, these collection points can only be used by staff and students.

Rubberised shoes that include sports shoes, school shoes, and football boots without metal studs will be accepted. Rubber sandals and slippers may be accepted too, according to SportSG.

Do note that the shoes should be dry and generally clean when you drop them off at the collection point. However, you do not have to wash your shoes prior to the drop-off.

The organisers hope to collect and recycle 170,000 pairs of sports and school shoes per year.

A permanent shoe waste collection eco-system

The permanent shoe waste collection ecosystem builds on the 2020 project "Others see an old shoe. We see the future.", which aims to build a permanent shoe waste collection eco-system.

Chief executive officer of SportSG, Lim Teck Yin, said that the public response to the project was encouraging and “demonstrates that Singaporeans are willing to join up if they can appreciate the meaningfulness of their participation”.

More than 75,000 pairs of used shoes were collected last year.

This equated to approximately 3.3km of jogging track built.

You can view the locations of all the collection points for old shoes here.

Top photo from MSE / FB