Fashion for Good, an innovation platform linking sustainability experts with major brands, has launched a refreshed initiative to increase circularity and recycling in the footwear industry, as BusinessGreen reported.
Around 24 billion shoes are produced globally every year, per the report, yet the varied materials and lack of resources to reuse and recycle these products have led to a huge influx at landfills.
To help address this issue, the group announced a renewed effort focusing on big footwear brands and retailers, with Adidas being one of the more recognizable names on the list.
The footwear giant has been working with Fashion for Good since 2018, and just last year, it joined with FastFeetGrinded to work on recycling and circularity in the industry.
This time around, as the report explained, the task is to identify challenges and drive innovation across four key segments: materials, circular design, end of use sorting and recycling, and traceability in order to confirm sustainability claims.
Fashion for Good's managing director Katrin Ley shared with BusinessGreen that there's an "urgent need to accelerate innovation in footwear sustainability."
"By doubling down on our efforts, we aim to drive circularity and validate sustainable solutions in a segment ripe for disruption," Ley said.
Overall, apparel and footwear are accountable for 4-8.6% of planet-warming pollution, topping that of the notoriously polluting aviation industry. What's worse, many of those wearables end up in landfills well before their time.
The fast fashion market has exacerbated the issue, growing by 15% in the first quarter of 2021, as the Natural Resources Defense Council detailed. Future-forward partnerships are needed to improve the situation. Otherwise, the fashion industry's pollution could grow to 26% of dirty emissions by 2050.
Luckily, changes have already started to make a difference, leading to Adidas' 2019 single-material FUTURECRAFT.LOOP shoe, which can be ground down and remade after use. The company also claims that it's on track to reduce carbon pollution by 15% per product by 2025, based on 2017 numbers.
The brand with the three stripes is holding true to the commitment it made six years ago when James Carnes, vice president of strategy creation, laid out the company's goals:
"At Adidas, we have an open source approach where we believe in solving problems through collaboration with others. In this line of thinking, our partnership with Fashion for Good reinforces our commitment to sustainability and to building a network that impacts the world of consumers — together."
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