Our program is FREE, and it is an easy way to significantly create carbon offset. MORE Foundation Group - Recycle Your Running Shoes & Help Us Plant Trees! As a direct action, climate responsible organization, we are the largest non-profit recycler of used athletic shoes in the United States. We partner with running stores, YMCA’s, gyms, fitness clubs/studios, churches, schools, corporations, priv
ate businesses, and running clubs across the country. MORE Foundation Group is 100% funded with recycled athletic shoes. These shoes fund our reforestation and plastic waste collection projects. All donated shoes are brought directly to our sorting center in Lewes, DE. Instead of decomposing in our landfills for 100 years, the shoes are sorted, graded, and prepared for further delivery. MORE sells the shoes to third party vendors who, in turn, distribute to local entities in developing nations to create micro economies. This process stimulates free enterprise and creates viable sources of income for families in those developing nations. And, importantly, those shoes will be reused by someone in need. Our partners display our FREE collection boxes in their establishments, allowing customers, clients, members, and employees to recycle their old athletic shoes. Each box can hold 35-45 pairs of shoes, and we have been able to plant 5 trees with every pair. Once a box is full, FedEx will pick it up and deliver it back to MORE at NO COST TO YOU. On average, a mature tree removes 48 pounds of carbon from the atmosphere every year. Thus, each full box of donated athletic shoes will lead to the removal of over 3 TONS of CARBON from the atmosphere per year. In Ghana, we continue to germinate, nurture, protect, and distribute hundreds of thousands of trees yearly - including fruit-bearing (mango, papaya, avocado) and income producing hard woods (mahogany for example) - to school nurseries and remote villages. Along with our expanding reforestation projects, we have recently begun our Clean Green Initiative. We are now harvesting and re-purposing discarded plastic. Each pair of donated shoes will also contribute to preventing plastic waste from reaching the ocean.
