Footwear brands collectively set the pace for circularity
Adidas, Puma and On are striding toward circular designs and business models through a new initiative. Read More
The nonprofit Fashion for Good has gathered 14 shoe brands and retailers to tackle waste, improve circular design and materials and establish systems for repair, reuse and recycling. Earlier this month, the Closing the Footwear Loop initiative became the latest of early efforts among companies to collaborate to reduce footwear waste and create innovative designs and business models.
Adidas, Dr. Martens, Inditex, Lululemon, On, Otto Group, Puma, Reformation, Target, Tommy Hilfiger, Vivobarefoot and Zalando are among the members striving to lighten the footprint of an industry in which nine in 10 of its products goes to waste.
Sourcing and crafting shoes from raw materials makes up more than two-thirds of the industry’s greenhouse gas footprint, according to McKinsey research. The $439 billion global footwear industry is set to grow by 4.3 percent per year through 2030, according to Grand View Research. Sustainable growth remains a challenge for the more than 500 apparel, footwear and textile companies that have set science-based targets to reduce their climate emissions.
“Ultimately, success will be defined by the industry’s ability to operationalize circularity through measurable, data-backed processes across design, production and end-of-life stages,” said Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good of Amsterdam, about the new collective.
Beyond one-off innovations
Efforts to create recyclable sneakers and compostable shoes have come in fits and starts through pilot projects and one-off designs. Reducing the dozens of parts found in the average sneaker is one puzzle. Last year, Asics billed its Nimbus Mirai as the first recyclable pair of running shoes. Its all-white color and relatively uniform polyester, with special glues and no metal eyelets, make it easier to recover the materials. In 2023, Puma trialed its classic suede sneaker for compostability. And in 2022, On debuted its Cloudneo shoe, available via subscription and meant to be recycled.
Other footwear circularity efforts by brands center around repair, reuse and resale. Dr Martens, for instance, debuted a portal for secondhand sales of its combat boots 10 months ago. Sneaker recommerce sites include Allbirds ReRun and New Balance Reconsidered.
“So far, there are not many scalable approaches with a view to a circular economy in the footwear industry,” said Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Social Responsibility Andreas Tepest of the Deichmann Group, a member of Closing the Footwear Loop. The Essen, Germany, shoe retailer seeks to collaborate with other brands on environmentally beneficial innovations, he added. Deichmann, which is privately owned, reported record sales of $9.07 billion in 2023.
“The initiative involves detailed mapping of European shoe waste streams and developing a comprehensive roadmap for circular shoe design,” Tepest said. “We will also explore ways to sustainably reuse, recycle or repurpose shoes at the end of their lifecycle.”
The backers of Closing the Footwear Loop work with the existing The Footwear Collective initiative, which launched in November 2023 out of nonprofit EarthDNA. The older group’s founding members include Brooks Running, Crocs, Ecco, New Balance, On, Reformation, Target and Vibram.
“Scale is essential for success and the complexity of shoe manufacturing compounds the difficulty of shoe circularity,” said Yuly Fuentes-Medel, The Footwear Collective’s founder and executive director. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she’s also a venture partner with Closed Loop Partners and program director of the MIT Climate Project.
The Footwear Collective’s approach includes emphasizing in-person gatherings and matching its goals to those of individual member companies to make progress. It has also sought to enlist buy-in from design, sourcing, finance and marketing teams.
Next steps
For 2025, a key activity for Closing the Footwear Loop includes working on pilot automation projects to sort and separate footwear materials, then analyzing the data. It will also iterate the methodology, perform research, consult stakeholders and collect data onsite at sorting facilities in Europe, Ley said.
Another workstream this year includes defining circularity criteria and guidelines, then testing their integration into circular fashion software. Early next year, the effort will zero in on scouting end-of-use innovation, performing landscape analysis and pilot projects.
The effort gained hold when a Fashion for Good footwear focus group of brands recognized the challenges of scaling circularity. “Unlike apparel, footwear consists of complex material blends, intricate constructions and limited recycling infrastructure, making end-of-life solutions difficult to implement,” Ley said. They eventually launched the strategic initiative to tackle the challenges head-on, she added.
“We explore, enable and leverage mutual networks for footwear industry transformation, and we make data-driven decisions for companies and circular solution providers, jointly execute projects and share learnings,” Ley said.
“By bringing together our expertise to tackle shared challenges and opportunities, we can move faster to build a more circular future,” Crispin Wong, Lululemon’s senior director of sustainable product and packaging, said in a media statement.
[Join over 1,500 professionals transforming how we make, sell, and circulate products at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver.]
