EcoKnights will give new life to your old shoes

Do you have old shoes and do not know what to do with them? 

Please don’t throw it away. You can now recycle it through the EcoKnights shoe recycling campaign.

Landfills are seeing an increase because of the shorter life expectancy of shoes.

This initiative could be the answer to addressing the limited space for landfills and reducing the environmental impact. 

The Malaysia Investment Development Authority (MIDA) estimates that the amount of solid waste generated in 2021 will be 38,427 tonnes per day, with 82.5 per cent disposed of in landfills. 

EcoKnights shoe Recycling Campaign.

Malaysia’s impact-driven sustainability organisation, EcoKnights, recently announced the launch of Old Soles New Life.

The shoe recycling campaign will create Malaysia’s first shoe waste recycling ecosystem.

Following this, EcoKnights partnered with Dow, a leading global materials science company, and Life Line Clothing Malaysia, a prominent textile recycling company.

This two-month campaign is the first phase of a project to achieve a permanent circular model of recycling shoe waste in Malaysia. 

The public can responsibly recycle their used and unwanted shoes by dropping them into shoe waste bins with red lids and white bodies around Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur and Johor. 

Through this initiative, EcoKnights and their partners provided the first 30 shoe recycling points around Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur and Johor.

“This campaign will bring the concepts of recycling and sustainability accessible to everyone. 

“Anyone can now do their part by simply dropping their used shoes in the allocated shoe bins to be recycled into sports infrastructures,” said Dow Malaysia and Singapore country director Paul Fong.

The soles (rubberised parts) will be ground into rubber granules and used in infrastructure construction such as sports surfaces.

Building an environmentally sustainable playground.

EcoKnights and their partners will turn the recycled shoes into a children’s playground at Sekolah Kebangsaan Bukit Tadom (A), Banting, Selangor, 

The school is an indigenous school catering to 100 indigenous students. A flood severely damaged the school’s playground in December 2021.

The recycled shoe materials will be bound using Dow’s water-based and solvent-free binder technology. The result is safer and more environmentally friendly.

“This partnership is an excellent example of public-private collaborations to drive sustainability through active public participation. 

“We hope this effort, among others, will open the path for demonstrating how the public can reuse waste for other purposes and, ultimately, how the circular economy works. 

Founder and President of EcoKnights, Dr Yasmin Rasyid, said the goal is to see the behavioural shift among Malaysians in terms of how we consume materials, treat and discard waste, and, ultimately, how we reuse materials for a better or different purpose. 

“This initiative is one-way EcoKnights is driving the urgency of adopting a sustainable lifestyle to transition into a carbon-neutral nation,” she added.

Meanwhile, Life Line Clothing CEO Dale Warren said that their goal is 

to divert as many shoes away from landfills as possible.

“This initiative could help play a major role in implementing shoe recycling in Malaysia, and we are excited about the outcome of this collaboration. 

More information about the Old Soles New Life shoe recycling campaign is available at the EcoKnights website.