Program helps schools raise money by collecting tennis shoes

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The 2011 EcoChallenge for Education is made available by "GreenSneakers" and is a free program to help Minnesota schools raise funds while helping environment. They can earn up to 50 cents a pound for all tennis shoes collected.

"This is an exciting opportunity to engage students in a meaningful tennis shoe reuse program that helps people, the planet, and Minnesota schools," said Doug Bartels, national director of the Fergus Falls-based GreenSneakers program.

The program officially Kicks off on Earth Day, April 22, and runs for three weeks. Students will each be given a bag and asked to collect as many pairs of used tennis shoes as they can and return them to the school. Collections will be weighed, recorded and placed in a temporary storage until the end of the program. The schools with the three highest collection totals (in average pounds per enrolled student) will win up to $20,000.

The impact on budget challenged Minnesota schools stand to be tremendous, Bartels said. If each student attending a Minnesota school were to bring in three pair of gently used or new tennis shoes they would raise more than $2 million, he said. The same amount of donations would also save more than 17,000 cubic meters of landfill space, he added.

GreenSneakers gives donated tennis shoes a second chance at life by making them available as affordable footwear for people in need around the world. By doing this the donated shoes are kept out of the landfill where they may take anywhere from 50 to 1,000 years to break down.

Additional information can be found here: http://www.paprles.org/ecochallengeoverview.

Tags: news, updates, recycle, environment