Minnesota schools given a green way to win $5,000

The 2012 EcoChallenge for Education is made available by GreenSneakers and is a free program to help Minnesota schools raise funds! Minnesota schools can help the environment and earn up to 50 cents a pound for all tennis shoes collected.

This is an opportunity to engage students in a meaningful tennis shoe reuse program that helps people, the planet, and Minnesota schools. The program officially Kicks off November 15th and runs through Earth day, 2012. Students will each be given an opportunity 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 temporary storage until the end of the program. Schools from four different categories, based on enrollment, with the highest collection totals (in average pounds per enrolled student) will win up to $5,000!

The impact on budget challenged Minnesota schools could be significant. If each student attending a Minnesota school were to bring in three pair of gently used tennis shoes they would raise over $2,000,000. Additionally, there is a positive impact to the environment. The same amount of donations will save over 17,000 cubic meters of landfill space.

With the GreenSneakers program schools can be assured that they are engaged in helping the planet through reuse and/or recycling. 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 - 1000 years to break down (Liberty Sports Magazine , Nov. 10, 2009)

With this reality, the need to make donated shoes available for reuse or recycling should be apparent, though by some estimates only 1 in 100 pairs are recycled annually. (Runners World ; Nov., 2008, P 77). The GreenSneakers EcoChallenge provides a great way for schools to implement an environmentally friendly fund raiser—that requires no selling—to help meet their own needs that also delivers global impact to people in need around the world.

Tags: minnesota news, updates, schools, environment