Nike Grind Partner Installs Sustainable Safety Surfacing at New Atlanta Community Playground
April 16, 2009
ATLANTA – On April 18, 2009, more than 100 volunteers will transcend on Freedom Park in the Atlanta, Ga., Poncey-Highland neighborhood to build the community’s first playground. Nike Grind partner, Playtop, will be joining other sustainable playground equipment manufacturers, SafePlay Systems and Landscape Structures, in creating this eco-friendly project. The play area, which will be utilized by hundreds of local children, is becoming a reality as a result of funding from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, Nike’s community investment program and many other local businesses and organizations.
Joining volunteers at the event will be City of Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, City Councilman Kwanza Hall, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington and several Nike athletes from the Atlanta Falcons.
Surfacing at the Poncey-Highland playground, to be installed after the initial April 18 construction date, will be extremely sustainable, with rubberized safety surfacing by Playtop installed in potential high-impact areas and engineered wood fiber in others. The playground’s equipment will be built by SafePlay Systems and Landscape Structures, and will be made primarily from recycled plastic milk jugs and other post-consumer materials.
The rubber portion of the surface incorporates 92 percent recycled materials, including automobile tires and Nike Grind rubber, a raw material derived from processing worn-out athletic shoe outsoles. Nike collects old sneakers, of any brand, through the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program and then recycles the shoes into athletic and play surfaces. The Reuse-A-Shoe program will be onsite during the playground’s construction, collecting shoes to be recycled into Nike Grind and educating the public on Nike’s innovative recycling initiative.
About Nike Grind
Nike Grind is the raw material resulting from the recycling of athletic shoes collected through Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program and from the recycling of scrap materials left over from the manufacture of Nike footwear. To date, more than 22 million pairs of athletic shoes and 20,000 tons of manufacturing scrap have been recycled through this first-of-its-kind program, which originated in 1990. Engineers have found uses for Nike Grind in high-quality sports surfaces as well as in new Nike products including numerous lines of footwear, All Conditions Gear (ACG) apparel and Nike Retail stores. Nike has partnered with market-leading sports surfacing companies who use Nike Grind in the manufacture of tennis and basketball courts, running tracks, athletic fields, playgrounds and fitness room flooring.
The Nike Grind program also helps support several other organizational initiatives outlined in the annual Nike Corporate Responsibility Report, which can be found at www.nikeresponsibility.com.
