What do we actually do with our shoes once they’ve served their time and become worn out?

— We throw them, hand them over to the junk or scrap dealer.

Finding a better use for the same, Greensole is an organization that refurbishes your old shoes into comfortable and trendy footwear for hundreds of children who walk to school.

Professional athletes and Indian Entrepreneurs, Shriyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami, started their venture in December 2013 and currently have 17 corporate partners to support this initiative. These companies conduct collection drives in their offices and pay GreenSole to refurbish the shoes and donate them in villages. Additionally, the organization conducts collection drives across the country independently as well. It has tied up with many schools and colleges and installed drop boxes in public places, like parks.

When GreenSole receives old shoes at their manufacturing unit in Navi Mumbai, their team washes and disassembles them to separate soles and uppers. Further they redesign them, starting by cutting soles according to the required sizes and use them to make the base of the slippers.

They send the shoes that still have some life left to them to athletes at the Sports Authority of India (SAI), in exchange for their old shoes. “Instead of melting the shoes like many shoe manufacturers do, we refurbish them so there is minimal carbon emission,” says Shriyans. To fight this problem, GreenSole first selects the villages to work in, conducts surveys on how many school-going children need slippers, gets their sizes and then provides what they need.

These are villages located in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The organization has some partner NGOs as well, which share knowledge about potential beneficiaries.