Letter to The Editor

Dear Editor:

The Junior Woman’s Club of Berlin would like to extend a sincere thank you to all who contributed old, stinky sneakers to our recent collection of worn out athletic shoes. With the assistance of everyone who “donated,” we were able to keep a few pairs of sneakers from clogging our landfills. Every year, millions of pairs of athletic shoes are thrown away, wasting good recyclable material. As part of Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program, worn out athletic shoes are collected, processed, and recycled into material used in sports surfaces like basketball courts, tennis courts, athletic fields, running tracks, and playgrounds around the world.

We collected 559 sneakers – not sure what happened to the mate of sneaker number 559! It took one minivan, with all the seats down and stuffed to the max, to get the sneakers to the drop off point at the Middletown recycling center.  That’s a lot of sneakers!

We would like to thank Superintendent of Schools David Erwin for allowing us to use school facilities to conduct the collection. Along with this, a big thank you to the office staff at Hubbard, Griswold, and Willard Elementary Schools and McGee Middle School for distributing flyers and keeping an eye on the collection boxes. The biggest thank you goes to my mother, Stanislawa Supinski, for once again helping to collect sneakers from the schools and deliver them to the final collection point.