As part of this ongoing effort, our team uniform orders this Spring will not include shorts. Instead, players may wear their own black shorts or leggings as part of their game day attire. We will continue to maintain inventory of shorts, and will be happy to provide shorts to any player that needs them.
We are taking this approach for Spring as a pilot with the hope that this will minimally impact our players, while helping to reduce waste.
In addition to this uniform change, there are many other ways we will be continuing to lower our environmental impact.
Team Gear Reuse
At the end of each season, we collect all of our team gear from our coaches. This includes hundreds of cones, pinnies, balls, first aid kits, ball pumps, goalie jerseys and goalie gloves. We sort and wash all the wearable gear and store everything away in our storage locker for the following season.
Where once we used to order new gear every year, we are now in a position where we are able to limit our near gear to only the things that need to be replaced. Over the past few seasons, that mostly means things like ball bags, whistles and ice packs. This means that not only do we generate less waste, we are also able to keep more of our operating budget for things like new programs and training.
2019 will be the first time we have had to place a major order for new soccer balls in five seasons of AYSO soccer
Uniform Recycling
In addition to gear collection, we have also been partnering with some organizations to help keep player uniforms in use.
We have successfully partnered with Lively Athletic in Oak Park to implement a cleat recycling program. Each season, Lively takes in used cleats which they prep for reuse and sell to local families for significantly less than typical retail for new cleats.
Additionally, we have partnered with non-profit Fields of Dreams Uganda and most recently we are working with US Soccer and The Chicago Fire as part of the Passback program to find homes for used uniforms.
This past season, Oak Park AYSO board member, Tom Finn helped to coordinate end of season uniform pick up at all of our playoff and U8 fields. Tom's work resulted in a giant pile of uniforms that will now be distributed to soccer programs in communities all across the US.
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