Run It Back

With funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies' Youth Climate Action Fund, Francesca Molakides set up six collection boxes around town to gather as many used sneakers as possible and send them to gotsneakers.com (a sneaker recycling service). Gotsneakers resells gently used sneakers and recycles parts of well worn sneakers, thereby keeping them out of the waste stream. Francesca also produced educational flyers and hosted a promotional event. Her goal is to raise awareness around the toxic effects of sneakers in landfills and incinerators and to encourage people to start recycling rather than discarding their old sneakers. Read more.