by The shoes may not immediately strike you as the future of mainstream fashion. Pale and porous, they look like a cross between a beige croc and the long-netted fungus found on the forest floor. However, their creators hope this will be the next big breakthrough in sustainable footwear: the world’s first 3D printed, made-to-measure, compostable shoe, which can be broken down at the end of its life, as try to stop it. millions of shoes flow into landfills every year.
Fashion is among the top polluting industries in the world. It is responsible for around 10% of global carbon emissions and consumes vast amounts of water and land for production. Modern shoes are among the most difficult items to produce sustainably because of their complexity, industry experts say, and there are few reliable statistics on how many are manufactured each year for the world’s 8 billion people. There is a complete lack of statistics regarding their impact on the environment.
Most shoes are made up of a mixture of synthetic fabric, rubber, plastic and metal, often held together with strong adhesives, and are extremely difficult to dispose of. Most are destined for landfill when they are used, where hundreds of years can take them to break down. Efforts are underway to pioneer recyclable trainers for the $70bn (£55bn) global industry, with some brands offering services if customers post back.
It is not an easy question. Shoes are very complex products
Luca Mosca, Quantis
To produce its new compostable model, London-based shoe company Vivobarefoot has teamed up with materials science company Balena to create prototypes of the shoes, which are not yet available for sale. They will be manufactured based on foot scans in the shop and then printed over 30 hours. Once worn, the footwear can be returned for composting at an industrial facility, where the patented material breaks down into a non-toxic substance.
“We’re trying to build a regenerative footwear business in an industry known for exploration, abstraction and ephemerality,” says Asher Clark, co-founder of Vivobarefoot. “This is about reimagining the way things are made from offshore linear production to the world’s first scanned to print footwear. It’s a vision to cut out a lot of waste in supply chains and provide an end-to-end solution for the footwear industry.”
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There are caveats to the sustainability claims of the shoes, says Clark, which will retail for between £200 and £260. BioCir flex, the patented thermoplastic used to make them is 51% biological material, 49% petrochemical. It can’t be thrown on a compost heap at the end of the garden to break down – it has to go to a composting plant. Clark says its durability is similar to other polymers used to make trainers, but its grip needs work.
“There’s a trade-off between biodegradability and durability: that’s the main tension. The external factors that break down physical products are things like light, heat and moisture,” he says. “The challenge is to make a shoe that will handle all those elements but also respond to the elements that start to break it down at the end of its life.” Both companies will continue to work to improve the design during the trial.
Glue and other binding materials can make shoes difficult to recycle, even when new substances are used for their main parts, such as cactus “leather” – a material made from the leaves of the nopal cactus – and derivatives of grape skin, says Luca Mosca. , fashion leader at sustainability consultancy Quantis. He says that it is still difficult to say what is an environmentally friendly shoe, and that consumers should use them as much as possible.
“It is not an easy question. We have to look at every stage of the product’s life cycle, the materials within the product. Here, there are many differences: it could be a performance-driven shoe mostly made of synthetics, or a casual shoe made of leather. Then you need to look at the environmental performance of the materials and the production processes to assemble the shoes. Last but not least, you need to look at how it will be treated at the end of life. Shoes are very complex products,” says Mosca.
New alternative materials like cactus leather are an important step forward, says Mosca, but they cannot be produced in large quantities and do not have all the characteristics of animal leather.
“It’s a good first step but it’s not a solid alternative to scale production. With all the criticism of leather, it is very durable and repairable,” he says.
Polly Lythall, business development manager for the not-for-profit British Footwear Association, says the shift of manufacturing bases to China and India has increased the cost of more sustainable options. She says that despite the rise of new materials, the durability and wearability of leather remains a strong choice.
Probably one of the most sustainable pieces of footwear, she says, is still a high-quality, well-made leather shoe. “You can resell it and repair the leather,” says Lythall. “A lot of research has been done on other materials such as banana skins and coconut skins but, at the end of the day, leather is a by-product of the meat industry and would go to waste. But most people could not afford the cost [of those high-quality shoes],” she says.
“Most vegan ingredients, if you look at them, have a lot more oil in them, and they’ve probably been imported from China. It is very difficult for our members and partners to navigate because there are no regulations. There is nothing that says if you want to classify a shoe as sustainable, it has to be X, Y or Z. There is nothing at all. It’s a very difficult subject,” says Lythall.
