Adidas Reveal Second Generation Recycled Running Shoe
The Futurecraft.Loop project is designed to be made sustainable from the start!
Back in April, adidas began their journey towards accommodating a circular economy approach in their designs. The Futurecraft.Loop projects presents us with a running shoe that has been designed to be recycled from the start.
Phase one of their projects saw 200 running shoes sent out to beta testers, once they were worn in the brand asked for the shoes to be returned. Footwear developer Amanda Verbeck explained the process, “We said to them: here are the shoes, go away, do what you want to do with them and then give them back to us. Yes, give them back.”
The reason was simple, so they could be ground in TPU pellets and made into individual components for new shoes, the result is their second generation running shoe in a blue colourway that remains 100% recyclable.
For most sportswear brands like adidas, innovation and ideas for new shoe concepts would normally be based on factors such as performance, creating a shoe that’s lighter, comfortable & supportive. This latest project shows a shift in thinking towards innovation and design, using sustainability as the need and requirement to base this on.
Brands are imagining their designs with sustainability in mind but not just through integrating this with already existing products, but instead by building designs from scratch using recycled materials. Unfortunately, to keep up with performance standards, it's not currently possible to build an entire shoe from recycled materials.
Kirupanantham mentions the importance of taking the first step towards manufacturing more sustainable products, “...We’re kind of paving the way and we’d love for consumers, for brands, for industry to join us on that journey. So it’s not, we don’t know all the answers. We’re hoping that we can do this together as a wider societal group.”
When talking about the first shoe Kirupanantham says that the idea for the first phase was to show the shoe in its natural light, there was no pigment or color added, just allowing the material to be what it is. This explores the ongoing discussion behind the language of sustainable design, what represents a sustainable material vs a non-sustainable material visually?
I think it’s fair to say we haven’t finalized a design language,” Kirupanantham says. “This is the start of it. I think you could look to our Ocean Plastic Initiatives as a parallel, where we had certain colors initially to give it a design language to it.” This raises interesting discussions on the look and feel of sustainably designed products.
The Futurecraft.Loop Projects aims to end plastic waste by making products with recycled materials. There is a lot of specifics that are yet to be discussed and confirms such as cost of sneakers and how many times they can be recycled but the launch is planned for Spring/Summer 2021.
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