There are plenty of things you expect passengers to accidentally leave behind when they walk out of a cruise ship stateroom for the last time. A phone charger plugged in behind the nightstand. Sunglasses tucked into a drawer. Maybe a swimsuit hanging on the bathroom door.
But shoes?
Apparently, cruise passengers leave behind a surprising number of them.
Carnival Cruise Line announced this week that it has partnered with Miami-based Sneaker Impact on a new program designed to keep unwanted footwear out of landfills. And the number that immediately caught my attention was this: more than 500 pairs of shoes were collected from just five Carnival ships during the month of July.
Five ships. One month. Five hundred pairs of shoes.
Before you start imagining 500 passengers walking through the cruise terminal barefoot, there’s an important distinction. Those weren’t necessarily all shoes forgotten under beds or abandoned in closets. Carnival says the program includes both unclaimed shoes left behind on the ship and shoes intentionally donated by guests and crew members.
Still, there are apparently enough abandoned shoes floating around Carnival ships to make this worthwhile, and instead of eventually throwing them away, Carnival has figured out somewhere useful to send them.
What Happens to All Those Shoes?
Carnival has become the first cruise line to partner with Sneaker Impact, which specializes in finding another use for footwear that might otherwise end up in the trash. The program is being rolled out across Carnival’s U.S. fleet.
Shoes collected onboard are shipped to Sneaker Impact’s facility in Miami, where they’re sorted and evaluated.
If a pair is still wearable, it can be made available to small business owners in developing countries who resell the shoes locally. That provides inventory for entrepreneurs while also making lower-cost footwear available in communities where it may be harder to find.
And if the shoes have reached the point where nobody should have to wear them again, they can still avoid the landfill.
Sneaker Impact breaks down unusable footwear and recovers materials that can be used in things including athletic surfaces, yoga mats and components for other footwear.
So that old pair of sneakers you were ready to toss could theoretically end up on somebody’s feet at a gym rather than buried in a landfill.
Carnival Thinks 500 Pairs Is Just the Beginning
The July numbers came from only five ships participating in the collection process. Carnival says that if the program were scaled across its entire fleet, it sees the potential to give another life to approximately 50,000 pairs of shoes.
That’s the part that really puts this into perspective.
Cruise ships generate an enormous amount of stuff that has to be dealt with at the end of every sailing, and passenger belongings are part of it. Some things make their way to lost and found. Some are eventually claimed. Plenty aren’t.
Shoes are particularly difficult waste because they’re made from combinations of rubber, foam, fabric, leather, plastics, adhesives and other materials. They’re not exactly something you simply toss into the standard recycling bin next to the aluminum cans.
Finding an organization specifically equipped to sort, reuse and recycle them makes considerably more sense.
How Passengers Can Participate
One of the better parts of the program is that it isn’t limited to somebody accidentally forgetting their sneakers under the bed.
Guests and crew members can intentionally donate footwear as well.
And cruise passengers may actually be a pretty good audience for something like this.
Maybe you brought an older pair of sneakers specifically for excursions and decided they weren’t worth packing home. Maybe your beach shoes have seen their last trip to Half Moon Cay. Or maybe you bought a new pair onboard or in port and suddenly don’t have much use for the old ones.
Normally the easiest answer would be the stateroom trash can.
Now there’s another option.
Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend intentionally packing shoes you plan on abandoning just so your suitcase weighs three pounds less on the trip home. But if something has reached the end of its useful life during the cruise, sending it into a reuse or recycling program is a lot better than sending it into the garbage.
It’s a Small Program, But a Pretty Good Idea
Cruise line sustainability announcements aren’t usually the most exciting things to read. There are only so many press releases about waste reduction and recycling initiatives that are going to make someone stop scrolling.
But this one is a little different simply because of that number.
More than 500 pairs of shoes. In one month. From five ships.
I still want to know how many of those were actual donations and how many were discovered by stateroom attendants after passengers went home. Because somewhere out there, somebody unpacked their suitcase after their cruise and presumably said, “Wait… where are my shoes?”
Whatever the answer, they’re now part of a program that gives wearable shoes another chance to be used and turns worn-out ones into something useful instead of simply throwing them away.
For an item that most of us probably never thought about as part of a cruise ship’s waste stream, that’s a surprisingly good ending.
And perhaps one more reason to check under the bed before leaving your stateroom on debarkation morning.
