How do you recycle light-up shoes?
The end-of-life of something as simple as kids shoes can be unexpectedly difficult.
You know those marvelous kids shoes that light up when you walk around in them? They have little LEDs that light up, with a battery, and a few sensors that convert footsteps taken into beautiful light patterns. If you’re a parent, they’re incredibly handy to have, especially if you‘ve got a child who’s prone to wandering off into the distance at night.
Very nice, but you have to wonder about what happens when they’re done—that is, the shoes’ end-of-life. They’ve got a fair amount of electronics inside, so you can’t throw them in the trash (batteries cause fires in trash trucks), you can’t throw them away as shoes (they’ve got electronics inside), and you can’t recycle them as electronics (they’re shoes).
It turns out that many of these shoes technically have replaceable batteries, but let’s be real—opening up the insole of a shoe, then prying out the electronics, then tweezing out the batteries is fairly complicated. There are many YouTube videos out there showing how to do it, but the process often looks like neurosurgery, except you have to pry out the sticky-gluey bits one at a time and fiddle with connectors, wires, and small batteries. Seriously, how many people are going to bother? And honestly, why should they? Would you want to spend an afternoon doing a kid shoe tear-down and maintenance?
And when the shoes have run their course, what should you do with them then? The answer seems to be that they’re classified as e-waste. Good luck with that. Hope your local e-waste processor is understanding.
It's a classic case of a product design that ignores the end-of-life.
What’s more, many light-up shoes may contain mercury so they should never be thrown in the garbage. This is particularly true for light-up shoes made prior to 1997, which should be disposed of as hazardous waste.
Rule of Thumb: Everything should be designed with end-of-life in mind—especially if it’s got electronics and batteries hidden deep inside of it. At very least, designers should be making those bits easily accessible and removable. Don’t be that designer.
This really shows how messy things get when products mix categories. These light-up shoes aren't just shoes, they're also electronics, and that throws everything off. Most recycling systems aren’t built to handle stuff that’s part clothing and part gadget.
I’ve run into the same problem with heated jackets, Bluetooth hats, even those LED dog collars. In California, technically anything with a battery is supposed to go to e-waste, but good luck getting a local recycling center to accept a pair of sneakers.
If brands are going to stick electronics in everyday stuff, they should at least make the battery easy to remove without tools or tutorials. Or better yet, set up a simple return system. We already do it for things like printer cartridges and earbuds. Why not kids’ sneakers?
It’s not just a design flaw. It’s a systems problem. We need better rules and better product planning from the start, so people aren’t stuck with stuff they have no clue how to get rid of.