Last autumn, Puma announced plans to offer a line of shoes, apparel, and bags that are fully compostable. Keeping with their quest to only manufacture gear that follows a complete technical or biological cycle, Puma now wants all your old gear to repurpose, including recycling into new Puma gear.
The new Bring Me Back program is Puma's way of moving us towards making a smaller impact on the earth. The company wants your old running shoes (or even dress shoes), apparel, and bags, regardless of brand, to be recycled into new gear, helping to mitigate the amount of new material that would otherwise be used to make new products.
Puma has partnered with I-Collect, creating a closed-loop system that diverts your old gear from landfills. I-Collect uses regional processing plants for sorting, repurposing, and recycling. Every item gets some sort of new life, whether re-used, up-cycled, or recycled into new raw materials.
To repurpose your gear, simply head to your nearest Puma store (we have one in San Francisco) and throw it in the big red Bring Back Bin. Puma hopes to have these bins available on a global scale by 2013.
If you are sad to part with some of your favorite gear, you can head on over to the Puma Bring Me Back website to upload a picture of your gear, along with a few parting words.