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)
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