In August, the Ogden Recreation Department in Ogden, Utah, in collaboration with the Ogden Youth Track Club, was awarded a Playtop Street with Nike Grind playground for the complex at Fourth Street Park through a sponsorship from the Hershey’s Track and Field Games. Hershey’s Track and Field Games gather thousands of youth athletes across the nation every year to compete in various athletic activities. Ogden was selected as the playground recipient due to its accomplishments and participation in the 2011 season. Construction of the first-of-its-kind playground began in early October and was unveiled to the public on October 20.

The Playtop Street playground configuration consists of an oval play areas with Playtop wet-pour rubber surfacing and twelve interactive satellites – which light up and produce a series of sounds activated by touch during games. As part of its partnership with Nike, Playtop Safer Surfacing uses Nike Grind Rubber in its wet-pour surfacing, creating a shock-absorbent, safe play space. Nike Grind is the raw material resulting from the recycling of athletic shoes collected through Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program and from the recycling of scrap materials left over from the manufacture of Nike footwear. The Ogden playground contains Nike Grind rubber from approximately 4,500 pairs of recycled shoes and was installed by Summit Recreation of Lakewood, Colorado. To date, more than 25 million pairs of athletic shoes and 30,000 tons of manufacturing scrap have been recycled through the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program, which originated in 1990.