It’s encouraging to see apparel and footwear companies working together to drive circularity in the industry. After all, it’s harder and less far-reaching alone. Following On, Patagonia, Puma and Salomon, which teamed up with biochemicals company Carbios last month to drive fiber-to-fiber recycling, now Zalando, Decathlon, Groupe Eram, and Revalorem have come together to make the footwear industry more circular close.
To this end, the four players have launched the first European innovation program for reprocessing shoes for the recycling of their soles via the innovation platform CETIA with the support of the Region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, investing a total of one million euros in the six-month-old Reshoes program. This is open to interested brands and companies.
The modern technology center aims to tackle the problem of separating the soles from the rest of the shoes. Previously there was no adequate technology to do this and old shoes were mostly completely shredded without dedicated recycling channels capable of handling the volume of shoes currently on the market. In France, for example, this means 8 percent of the market volume, which corresponds to 224 million pairs of shoes.
“Shoes bring up the rear when it comes to recycling”
“Shoes bring up the rear when it comes to recycling in Europe because the technical barriers are very difficult to overcome. It’s great news that such key players are working together to break the technological hurdles to transform their industry. We are proud to be able to bring them together with Reshoes,” explains CETIA director Chloé Salmon Legagneur in a statement.
“At a time when the prices of oil-based raw materials are skyrocketing, the recycling of polymers from shoe soles offers a huge opportunity for decarbonization, but also for price stability. Revalorem, a leading player in the recycling of unsold goods in the luxury sector and producer of recycled raw materials, is directly affected by this project. We will integrate its results into our industrial units,” adds Revalorem President Eric Legend.
In March 2023, the program is scheduled to inaugurate its first 100 percent automated line, which will process 1,000 shoes and soles a day at the pilot plant, from material identification to sole removal, and sorting and processing the materials into recyclable waste. The feasibility of the process developed by CETIA should first be tested before it is used on a large scale.
“As part of our sustainability strategy, we are committed to promoting the circular economy and a behavior change towards circular products. Supporting innovation and pioneering initiatives in France is in line with this objective. With our contribution to the Reshoes program, Zalando is engaging in a local partnership to accelerate the separation of shoe components and eventual recycling of shoes,” comments Laura Coppen, Head of Circular Economy at Zalando.
The equipment used for the Reshoes program is entirely made in France, using CETIA’s skills in vision, image processing and automation in collaboration with the manufacturer of special machines Semso, for all types of shoes from luxury to urban – to sports shoes and any type of assembly, that is, glued, assembled and sewn soles.
“As designers and retailers, we at Decathlon are aware of the impact that will be made. Our teams work every day to change the life cycle of our products and to find new, circular solutions. The shoe is a very complex part of recycling as it is made up of multiple materials that are difficult to separate. The CETIA program to automate and industrialize recycling that we (Decathlon Footwear) work with is a real win for the footwear industry. Through this program we will be able to better design the shoes of tomorrow, for example by reusing recycled raw materials to reduce the consumption of resources,” adds Clémence Goubet, Head of Sustainable Footwear Development at Decathlon.