An ambitious initiative has been launched aimed at accelerating and validating the next generation of footwear innovations.
- It will address the key intervention points needed to drive footwear circularity spanning four workstreams across the supply chain from materials to end of use.
- The initiative has been launched by innovation platform Fashion for Good and its footwear focused partners Adidas, Inditex, ON Running, PVH Corp, Reformation, Target and Zalando.
- This builds on Fashion for Good’s existing work leveraging their expertise in scouting, validation, and pioneering innovation and collaboration.
- The overarching idea is that industry-wide collaboration would be vital to overcome the various roadblocks in this space.
THE CONTEXT: Around 23.9 billion shoes are produced globally each year, and these are often made using over 40 different components from a range of materials including TPU, EVA, PU and rubber. The industry faces significant challenges due to this high complexity of shoe construction.
- This, combined with a low collection rate, results in a vast majority of discarded footwear ending up in landfills.
- Fashion for Good sees the need to address this challenge and focus on laying the foundation for footwear circularity as well as accelerating innovation.
- It will, therefore double down work in this space, building on their existing projects including the Fast Feet Grinded pilot, which tests and validates its footwear recycling process.
FOUR CORE WORKSTREAMS: Fashion for Good has identified the key intervention points across the shoe lifecycle and structured work into four core workstreams. These workstreams include:
- Materials: Scouting and validating sustainable alternatives for footwear materials including TPU, PU, EVA, leather and rubber.
- Design: Defining circular design in the footwear space and collectively driving guidelines to build a circular infrastructure.
- End of Use—Sorting, Disassembly, Recycling: Developing a comprehensive data set on post-consumer footwear waste flows, including (non-)rewearable fractions, volumes, construction and composition. As well as scouting and validating solutions for repair, end of use, disassembly and recycling of footwear.
- Traceability: Laying the foundation by amalgamating a footwear traceability data protocol to build traceability for evidence to substantiate sustainability claims.
CALL FOR INNOVATIONS: Fashion for Good is looking for breakthrough sustainable solutions in the footwear sector that maintain performance and durability.
Anyone who has a relevant technology can apply by 20 September 2024.
WHAT THEY SAID:
Fashion for Good and our corporate partners, including adidas, recognize the urgent need to accelerate innovation in footwear sustainability. Over the past seven years, we have consistently broken norms across various segments and are now leveraging our expertise to radically reimagine footwear. By doubling down on our efforts, we aim to drive circularity and validate sustainable solutions in a segment ripe for disruption.
— Katrin Ley
Managing Director
Fashion for Good
Adidas has been a partner of Fashion for Good for over six years now. Through this partnership, we have collaborated on a number of different sustainable innovation initiatives that are benefitting the fashion industry. Now we want to build on this know-how and expand our focus into the Footwear space. Currently, there is a limited portfolio of low-impact materials which also meet the necessary performance requirements that are also scalable. We hope this initiative will help overcome some of these hurdles.
— Sigrid Buehrle
Senior Vice-President (Product Operations)
Adidas
