NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 4, 2026--
Soles4Souls, the global nonprofit turning shoes and clothing into opportunity, today announced the acquisition of Erren Recondition, a European leader in footwear and apparel reconditioning. The acquisition significantly expands Soles4Souls’ ability to help brands and retailers extend product life, reduce waste and create economic opportunity through scalable circular solutions.
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This acquisition strengthens Solutions4Good, Soles4Souls’ circular solutions platform that provides brands with responsible pathways for sorting, reconditioning, recommerce, repurposing and reuse.
“Erren has spent years building a reputation for quality, innovation and reliability in circular reconditioning,” said Buddy Teaster, President & CEO of Soles4Souls. “Combining their expertise with our global mission allows us to create even more impactful solutions—helping partners reduce waste, deepen sustainability commitments and create lasting economic opportunity.”
Erren Recondition will continue operating in continental Europe as “Erren Recondition, a Soles4Souls company,” preserving its trusted brand and technical leadership in the region. In the United Kingdom and United States, Soles4Souls will integrate Erren’s expertise directly into its operations, expanding its ability to deliver circular solutions through a unified global platform.
This acquisition strengthens Solutions4Good, Soles4Souls’ circular solutions platform that provides brands with responsible pathways for sorting, reconditioning, recommerce, repurposing and reuse. Brands looking to partner with S4S can email solutions4good@soles4souls.org.
For more information on Soles4Souls and how to partner with us, go to Soles4Souls.org.
About Soles4Souls
For 20 years, Soles4Souls has turned more than 116 million pairs of shoes and pieces of clothing into opportunity, dignity, and independence. Through footwear-first programs, community engagement, and circular solutions for brands and retailers, Soles4Souls keeps quality products in use and out of landfills—while delivering measurable outcomes for students, people in need, and entrepreneurs. Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, the nonprofit operates across four continents. In Europe, Soles4Souls operates through its subsidiary, Soles4Souls Europe Stichting. In 2026, Soles4Souls is celebrating its 20th anniversary by reflecting on its journey, celebrating our collective impact, and envisioning bold ideas for the next 20 years. Step Forward with us at soles4souls.org.
About Erren Recondition
Erren Recondition, founded in 1980, is a leading specialist in high-quality reconditioning of shoes, clothing, and accessories. The company offers a wide range of services, including sorting, cleaning, washing, repairing, finishing, label corrections, quality control, and packaging. With in-depth technical expertise, Erren ensures that products are made market-ready and do not have to be destroyed — a sustainable solution that creates both economic and ecological value. Learn more at Erren.com.
“Combining their expertise with our global mission allows us to create even more impactful solutions—helping partners reduce waste, deepen sustainability commitments and create lasting economic opportunity," said Buddy Teaster, President & CEO of Soles4Souls.
By combining Soles4Souls’ global network and impact expertise with Erren’s decades of technical reconditioning leadership, the organization is establishing an integrated platform that keeps products in use longer while delivering measurable environmental and social outcomes.
NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.
In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.
To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.
To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.
“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”
Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.
Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.
The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.
The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.
Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.
For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.
Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.
But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.
“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.
The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.
The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.
As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”
The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.
The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”
Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”
The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.
The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.
But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.
In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.
The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.
Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.
“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.
Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.
That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.
Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
