The Dutch company FastFeetGrinded turns old shoes into new raw materials. They are doing this globally and in a revolutionary way. We at FashionUnited wanted to know more about it. Co-founder David Uijttewaal answers our questions.
Tell us who you are and what FastFeetGrinded is?
I’m David Uijttewaal, co-founder of FastFeetGrinded. Danny Pormes and I started this company five years ago. We knew each other from our days in the Marine Corps and then we did all sorts of things together. Danny has a sports shop in Hoorn, Runners World, and we also supply sports shoes to the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Justice. That means thousands and thousands of shoes every year. At one point the government asked us, “What are you doing on sustainability?” At the time, the answer was: not much. But it got us thinking. Our counter-question was, “What do you actually do with all those shoes that are leftover or worn out?” Turns out they ended up in the garbage heap. We knew then that we had to do something.
What have you done with them?
We started collecting shoes. First, military and judicial shoes, then athletic shoes through collection points in sporting goods stores, and finally all types of shoes. Now we have hundreds of collection points across Europe and worldwide. We not only collect used shoes, but also – on behalf of brands, manufacturing companies, delivery companies and trading companies – overstock, rejects, returns and samples. We collect millions of shoes every year. In the beginning we dismantled the shoes by hand with the help of employees from a workshop for the disabled. However, that was not crowned with success. So we developed our own Shoe Recycle Machine.
That sounds revolutionary.
Yes that’s it. I can’t say exactly how the machine works because there are a number of patents on it, but you can imagine: on one side the shoes go in, already sorted by type, and on the other side they come raw materials out. We are talking about rubber, foam, textile and leather. For every thousand kilos of shoes, 380 kilos of foam, 170 kilos of rubber and 230 kilos of textile are produced. Our goal is to process one million pairs of shoes this year.
What happens to the raw materials?
As far as possible, the raw materials are returned to the shoe manufacturers, who use them to produce new shoes. We also sort by brands, for example. We work with almost every major sneaker and shoe brand in the world. You provide us with the shoes and we return the raw materials. From shoe to shoe, that is our goal. That is the goal of the circular economy. In addition, all sorts of other products are made from our raw materials. This includes rubber floors for children’s playgrounds and shop floors, counters and displays for the retail chains we work with. We are currently running a pilot project using the rubber from climbing shoes in climbing gym floors.
What’s the future like?
In recent years we have outgrown our premises and moved to a larger building. We are currently located in a beautiful large building in Heerhugowaard. We are also further developing our Shoe Recycle Machine. The capacity is getting bigger and the raw materials are getting cleaner. We are supported by Heilig BV, a company specialized in recycling and recycling machines in the broadest sense of the word. Ultimately, the goal is to place the SRM, as we call the machine, in multiple locations around the world. So that the shoes no longer have to come to the Netherlands from all over the world, which is still the case. We are working hard on it and everything looks positive.
What is your message to the fashion industry?
For years we have been fighting for a disposal fee on shoes, a kind of deposit or recycling fee, so that the recycling process can be financed. Only then can really big steps be taken. So far we have developed and financed everything ourselves. When you consider that 12 billion pairs of new shoes are produced every year and that 95 percent of them end up in landfill and/or incinerated, you realize the need to do something about it.
Written by Judith Munster
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ