Nike Grind Case Study

1.0 Introduction

In early 1990, Nike Inc. – an American multinational sports equipment manufacturer, began considering different methods to minimize its environmental impact, reduce the amount of shoes discarded in landfills and create an overall closed loop system of sustainability. Through this objective, they created the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe Campaign under their Nike Better World division (Gabriel, 2012).

The program involved the collection of old, non-metal-containing, damaged athletic shoes of any brand for recycling. At their recycling plants, the old shoes are transformed into Nike Grind which is a material used to create high quality sports and playground surfaces as well as various Nike apparel, footwear and equipment products (Ogpl.gov.in, 2013).

Nike Reuse-A-Shoe and Nike Grind are both a part of Nike Better World which is a company philosophy focused on creating the best products while using the most sustainable techniques wherever possible (Nikegrind.com, 2014).

Since its inception, the program has collected over 28 million pairs of sport shoes and created 36,000 tons of scrap material which was turned into Nike Grind for use in over 450,000 locations worldwide (Nike.com, 2013). Majority of the collections came from the U.S. as Nike’s main processing plant is located in Memphis, Tennessee. They have only one other Nike Grind processing plant which is located in Meerhout, Belgium (Gabriel, 2012).

The American facility uses a "slice and grind" method, which involves cutting each shoe into three parts that are then ground and filtered to become the different types of surfacing material. The Belgian facility grinds the entire shoe, and then passes the resulting material through a series of filters to derive the same three ...

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...tting to say that this campaign did in fact reach its goals and objective that were set out. According to Nike official website, Nike has collected 28 million pair of shoes since the year 1990 and surface that were made with Nike Grind cover about 632,000,000 square feet – nearly enough to cover Manhattan. In 2011, Converse Sneaker decided to partner with Nike Reuse a Shoes program and has seen large-scale success in turning worn out shoes into sports surfaces and playgrounds (Bratcher, 2004). From this point, Nike Reuse a Shoe program has reached its goal which was to set a trend for recycling in footwear industry and increase their sustainability. However, the campaign is still on going and in the upcoming years, as they develop their campaign strategy and possibly expand worldwide, they can make a much greater effect that will create a positive global impact.