Put your foot down and put a stop to trainer over-consumption and waste. The charity JogOn is making great strides in cutting landfill and donating where possible
HEADLINES
JogOn is a UK-wide campaign that aims to reduce the number of running shoes that end up in landfill each year. The campaign launched in April 2022 with the goal of removing one million pairs of running shoes and so far, it has collected approximately 15,000 pairs.
An average pair of trainers takes about a thousand years to decompose, yet 33 million pairs of trainers are being added to landfill each year. JogOn’s process is simple: 97% of the running shoes that they receive are still in good enough condition to be re-used. These shoes are sent to charities that service end users, organisations who run outreach programmes and micro-economies. In the UK, JogOn’s work has meant school children can continue doing sport in and out of school because they have trainers to wear.
As well as donating shoes, the campaign makes sure any end-of-life shoes are sent to Waste to Energy, which incinerates waste to produce electricity as an alternative to landfill.
So, how can you get involved? In partnership with courier Evri, members of the public can send in their shoes from anywhere in the UK for a set fee of £2 (for up to 15kg of shoes, which equates to about 35 pairs) to JogOn’s HQ in West Sussex, where they are sorted and boxed.
The campaign is doing so well and the number of shoes collected is growing at such a rapid rate that JogOn is also looking for more partners to help with the mission, to spread awareness and reduce that whopping 33 million pairs of yearly discarded trainers. To get involved, visit jogonagain.com.
AREYOUR RUNNING SHOES INCREASING THERISK OF INJURY?
Run Better Research has been looking into the high number of runners’ injuries to see if running shoes are to blame. The study, conducted by the German Sport University in Cologne and the True Motion Research Laboratory has revealed that, of the 1,724 study participants, runners who used a neutral shoe injured themselves more frequently than other runners. The research also revealed that the knee, Achilles tendon and back are the areas most commonly injured by running, and that your choice of shoe technology is a determing factor.
It found that the U-Technology in True Motion shoes, which launched in 2019, can reduce the risk of knee injuries by more than half compared to other sole technologies, and that run
