Fashion for Good seeks sustainable footwear solutions

Fashion for Good, based in Amsterdam, and its footwear-focused partners Adidas, Inditex, ON Running, PVH Corp., Reformation, Target and Zalando have announced a new initiative aimed at accelerating the next generation of footwear innovations.

This initiative will address key intervention points needed to drive footwear circularity spanning four work streams across the supply chain from materials to end-of-use. Fashion for Good has launched a call-for-action, asking all relevant innovators to apply and collaborators to join in the movement. Industrywide collaboration will be vital to overcome the various roadblocks faced in this space, Fashion for Good says.

“Adidas has been a partner of Fashion for Good for over six years now,” Adidas Senior Vice President Product Operations Sigrid Buehrle says. “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.”

Around 23.9 billion shoes are produced globally each year made from using more than 40 different components from a range of different materials such as thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), polyurethane (PU) and rubber. This high complexity of shoe construction combined with a low collection rate results in a vast majority of discarded footwear ending up in landfills.

Fashion for Good says it will build upon its existing projects, including the Fast Feet Grinded pilot, which tests and validates Fast Feet Grinded’s footwear recycling process.

To effectively address the challenges in footwear sustainability, Fashion for Good says it has identified the key intervention points across the shoe lifecycle and structured work into four core workstreams:

1. materials, by scouting and validating sustainable alternatives for footwear materials including TPU, PU, EVA, leather and rubber;
2. design, with defining circular design in the footwear space and collectively driving guidelines to build a circular infrastructure;
3. end of use sorting, disassembly and recycling, by developing a comprehensive data set on postconsumer footwear waste flows, including nonrewearable fractions, volumes, construction and composition, as well as scouting and validating solutions for repair, end-of-use, disassembly and recycling of footwear; and
4. traceability, with laying the foundation by amalgamating a footwear traceability data protocol for building evidence to substantiate sustainability claims.

This initiative will build on Fashion for Good’s experience in orchestrating multistakeholder projects as well as driving innovation pipeline and validation work. Collaboration with ecosystem partners such as The Footwear Collective will align efforts to achieve impactful results, according to the group.

"Fashion for Good and our corporate partners, including Adidas, recognize the urgent need to accelerate innovation in footwear sustainability,” Fashion for Good Managing Director Katrin Ley says. “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."