state-of-the-art shoe recycling technology
SHOES End-of-life
Around one-fifth (20%) of the climate impact
from the apparel industry comes from footwear alone.
In 2018, the global production of footwear breached more than
24 billion pairs
The problem is that shoes are inherently difficult to recycle. They can be made of a wide variety of materials, often spanning up to 40 different components, making it challenging to take shoes apart and recycle each piece accordingly.
On a glo scale, around 1.4% of our total emissions come from our shoes. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s staggering that a single type of clothing that’s supposed to last us years—and thus have less of an impact -contributes around 700M metric tons of CO2 per year.
Additionally, there are a limited number of facilities that can cater to shoe recycling.
The end result? Around 90% of the shoes we wear eventually end up in landfills.