More than 50 billion shoes are made every year. The biggest manufacturers, like Nike, Adidas, and Asics, make them durable enough to run hundreds of miles. But this also makes them incredibly expensive and difficult to recycle. Now, one Dutch company has developed a method to combat waste while the industry searches for more sustainable materials.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 We make nearly 50 billion shoes every year,
00:06 and nearly all of them end up in landfills.
00:09 Now, a company in the Netherlands claims
00:11 it's figured out how to recycle footwear,
00:15 processing up to 2,500 shoes per hour.
00:19 And some big brands, like Adidas,
00:22 say they're trying to cut down on waste too
00:25 by using materials made from ocean plastic.
00:29 So why is it so hard to recycle shoes?
00:32 And are any of the big brand efforts making it easier?
00:35 (shoes clattering)
00:38 Your typical running shoe can contain
00:40 about 40 different parts and dozens of different materials.
00:44 These include plastic, nylon, metal, rubber,
00:48 and something called ethylene vinyl acetate
00:51 that's basically a kind of foam.
00:53 For most mass-produced shoes,
00:56 the layers are held together with powerful glue,
01:00 and that's what makes these products
01:01 so hard to break down and recycle.
01:04 Getting rid of the glue is important
01:06 because any remaining sticky residue
01:08 would contaminate the separated materials,
01:11 and shoemakers need these materials
01:13 in their purest form to make new shoes.
01:16 Entrepreneurs Danny Pormez and his wife Erna
01:20 say they found a way to recycle
01:22 every single part of the shoe.
01:24 For all the materials, we do have the solution.
01:27 The company, Fast Feet Grinded, or FFG for short,
01:32 gets shoes from the Dutch military,
01:34 from collection boxes in stores,
01:36 and sometimes directly from manufacturers.
01:40 They pay FFG to dispose of defective shoes
01:43 or pairs returned by customers.
01:45 First, you need to separate them by type.
01:48 FFG operates a completely automated mechanical system
01:52 that doesn't use chemicals like glue solvents
01:55 to separate the different components.
01:58 Danny tried everything, from microwave ovens to irons.
02:03 Tried to do it myself, dismantling shoes by hand.
02:06 Did all those fool stuff.
02:09 In the end, a series of machines
02:10 that use heat and friction
02:12 proved to be the most effective method.
02:14 This is where the magic happens.
02:17 One machine heats the shoes to remove the glue.
02:20 Then another separates the different materials.
02:24 Beyond using heat and friction,
02:26 the company wouldn't share any further details
02:29 about its process.
02:30 But we do know that the final products
02:33 are separated by type,
02:35 with the foam and rubber being ground down
02:37 into tiny particles.
02:39 So the rubber will be rubber,
02:41 without any contamination, without any glue.
02:44 FFG also isolates the other materials from the shoe,
02:48 like fabric from the uppers
02:50 that can be spun into yarn to make new shoelaces,
02:53 and metals from steel-toed safety shoes.
02:57 Danny and Erna started their recycling journey
03:00 in their running shop.
03:02 I've got a fishing, but my wife is a business wife.
03:05 We started together 20 years ago,
03:08 and if she wasn't there, yeah, I was totally done.
03:12 We are willing to change the whole shoe industry.
03:15 It's very hard, but we are doing it.
03:19 They opened their shoe store, Runner's World Hoorn,
03:22 in 2004, offering tailored recommendations to customers,
03:26 depending on their style of running.
03:28 Danny, an ex-Marine, won contracts
03:32 to supply Dutch soldiers with sneakers, and then...
03:36 The Dutch government asked us, yeah,
03:38 about eight years ago to think about recycling,
03:41 thinking about a return program,
03:44 and that's basically how Fast Feed Grind started.
03:47 FFG also partnered with Asics to figure out
03:50 how to make new sneakers from old ones.
03:53 But shoemakers say recycled materials come with limitations.
03:58 If we take our highest-performance running shoe,
04:01 making that entirely from circular, recycled materials,
04:06 it won't have the same functional properties still.
04:10 For now, the shoes Asics makes from old materials
04:13 are not meant for high-performance running.
04:16 Our ultimate goal would be that they are just as functional,
04:20 just as good as all our running products,
04:22 and hopefully it will not be just a cool side project,
04:26 but something that we can really implement
04:28 into the way we make shoes at large.
04:32 Companies around the world are trying to figure out
04:35 how to make a less wasteful shoe.
04:38 Adidas, which makes more than 420 million pairs
04:42 of shoes every year, has a couple of products in development.
04:46 In 2015, the company began making sneakers
04:50 and other apparel using plastic garbage
04:52 collected from the ocean.
04:54 The plastic gets crushed into flakes,
04:56 heated, and cooled into pellets
04:59 before being spun into a polyester filament
05:01 that can be used to make the sneakers' uppers.
05:04 But that still leaves us with a shoe
05:06 that can't be entirely recycled.
05:08 In 2021, Adidas unveiled a shoe made entirely
05:12 out of virgin plastic with no glue holding it together.
05:16 The FutureCraft Loop was designed to be recycled
05:19 into future generations of the same shoe.
05:22 Adidas says that using only one material
05:25 lets it break down the shoe and recycle it
05:27 without fear of contaminants.
05:29 But the plan only works if the company
05:32 can convince customers to return the old pairs.
05:35 While big companies experiment with recyclable sneakers,
05:39 researchers at UC San Diego have looked
05:42 at making footwear from biodegradable materials.
05:45 Steve Mayfield and his team turned to algae
05:48 for an environmentally-friendly flip-flop.
05:51 They are the most efficient photosynthetic organisms
05:55 on the planet.
05:56 In 2021, we visited Steve's lab in San Diego.
06:00 The process for turning algae into flip-flops
06:05 is surprisingly simple.
06:07 The shoe consists of a footbed made from flexible foam,
06:10 an outsole made of a more rigid foam, and a cotton strap.
06:15 To make the foam pieces, the researchers
06:17 use an industrial machine to mix together compounds
06:20 created from algae oil.
06:22 This is the same machine you'd see
06:24 if you went into any one of the shoe manufacturers
06:27 in the world.
06:28 We wanna make sure that the research
06:29 and the work we do here is relevant to the real world,
06:32 to the commercial world.
06:34 The machine pours the mixture into molds.
06:37 The team then applies heat, and the foam expands
06:40 into the shape of a shoe.
06:42 They wait about 10 minutes for the foam to cure,
06:44 then peel the pieces out and assemble the finished product.
06:48 You put the strap through here,
06:50 and then put the back two parts here,
06:51 you glue that on, and then this entire thing glues,
06:54 and that's it, that's all the shoe is.
06:55 So the manufacturing of these things
06:57 is also really straightforward.
07:00 The sandal is 100% biodegradable.
07:03 It takes three to six months to break down in a compost pile,
07:07 or if it ends up in the ocean, it would take about a year.
07:10 Steve and his team have partnered with the brand Reef,
07:14 and plan to sell an algae sandal by the summer of 2024.
07:19 Over in India, another entrepreneur
07:21 is inverting this process.
07:23 Instead of saving shoes from the landfill,
07:25 he's turning the landfill into shoes.
07:28 Ashe Bhave started daily in 2021,
07:32 when he was just 23 years old.
07:34 We profiled his business later that year.
07:37 Theli, because it is the Hindi word for plastic bags.
07:42 Each pair contains 10 plastic bags and 12 bottles.
07:46 They clean the bags in a hot tub filled only with water,
07:51 without any added chemicals,
07:52 and then hang them out to dry.
07:56 Inside the warehouse,
08:00 Sairuddin stacks eight to 10 layers of bags at a time.
08:04 I make at least 100 bags a day.
08:07 Then places the pile under a heat press.
08:10 This finished product will cover most of the sneaker.
08:17 The company's founder calls it Thelitex.
08:21 So it's a material that's made entirely
08:22 out of waste plastic bags,
08:23 without the use of any chemicals.
08:25 Sairuddin packs and ships them seven hours north,
08:29 to the Natush footwear factory.
08:33 (horn honking)
08:35 That's where the shoe will be assembled.
08:37 First, Thelitex sheets are dye cut using metal forms.
08:43 Other patterns are cut from Arpet fabric,
08:48 which is made from recycled bottles,
08:50 and woven into something like canvas.
08:53 The workers stitch the two types of materials together.
08:56 The assembled upper gets stretched out.
09:01 Daly's soles are made from crumbs of industrial rubber.
09:05 A worker needs to rough the sole on this grinder,
09:08 so the glue added in the next step will adhere.
09:11 They coat the top of the sole with a clear glue.
09:14 A special UV light increases its stickiness.
09:19 The shoes go through a series of heat treatments and coats
09:23 to strengthen the bond between the sole and the upper.
09:29 Then comes the final round of stitching.
09:31 Daly's laces are also made from recycled plastic.
09:37 This factory employs 170 people,
09:40 and makes shoes for three different companies.
09:43 - We wanted to make sure that we're still using
09:45 existing sneaker manufacturing techniques.
09:48 You know, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel.
09:50 - Natush turns out 15,000 pairs of shoes every week,
09:55 and they try to recycle everything, even scraps.
09:58 - It's recycled, and some of it is also reused
10:02 to make more 3D-text sheets.
10:04 - The company sold 300 pairs of sneakers in its first month,
10:08 and says the shoes are built to last.
10:10 - It's extremely durable.
10:13 It lasts like any other sneaker for about two to three years,
10:16 depending on how it is used.
10:18 - Back in the Netherlands, Willem Tertola's company
10:21 is using old shoe materials on a new mini soccer pitch.
10:26 - Danny gave me a call because he saw that on the internet
10:31 that I make artificial rubber floors,
10:33 and he wanted to talk with me about the possibilities
10:35 and the ideas he had about recycling shoes.
10:40 This is the beginning of something.
10:43 - Workers mix the ground shoes with a polymer binder
10:46 and spread it over a concrete foundation
10:48 to provide a soft and bouncy surface for play.
10:52 It's a fitting new life for many of the companies
10:54 that may have been worn by the people who play here.
10:57 A company called Exclusive International
11:00 turns FFG's materials into displays,
11:03 like these ones at ASIC's headquarters.
11:06 - We're bringing between 45 and 60% of the grind
11:11 in the material, and we bring them back
11:14 in this sheet material.
11:16 This is specific PVC from Dr. Martens also.
11:20 Here you can see the yellow stuff.
11:23 Here you can see the yellow stitching back in the regrind.
11:27 - Back at FFG, Danny and Erne
11:29 are still honing their process,
11:32 occasionally with the help of their four children.
11:35 The family has faced many hurdles,
11:37 including a fire that completely gutted
11:39 their first recycling plant in 2022.
11:42 - So everything burned down.
11:45 Nothing been saved.
11:49 - But within 10 months,
11:50 their new facility was already up and running.
11:53 - Most of the people in the beginning, they are laughing,
11:56 but now they are saying to us,
11:59 "My God, this is so, so good that you have been fighting
12:04 to do this, to make it right and to get it done."
12:08 - It's a family business.
12:09 It's a family business with passion
12:12 and with a strategy for long-term.
12:16 (upbeat music)
12:18 (upbeat music)
12:21 (upbeat music)
12:24 (upbeat music)