Intelligence
by Tim Brown, a former professional New
Zealand soccer player, and Joey Zwillinger,
an engineer and expert in renewable materials.
They went public with just one shoe design,
with a seamless superfine merino wool upper.
Brown’s fundamental idea was to make a
shoe using fewer processes but in better and
more sustainable materials. The brand has
since added a eucalyptus-based fibre and
a sugarcane-based rubber to the mix. It has
reportedly sold $100m-worth of shoes and
the company is valued at over a $1bn.
Launched in the US in 2010 and another
$1bn-plus brand, Everlane is built on selling
stylishly low-key basics online (though it now
has stores in New York and San Francisco)
and supply-chain transparency. This year, itunveiled a sneaker sub-brand, Tread, with
‘The Trainer’, in recycled plastic and rubber
and the lowest-impact leather it could find.
These brands now head a list of producers,
each with their own approach to making
sustainable sneakers. All, though, including
Veja and Allbirds, remain relative minnows
in the industry. It should also be noted that
all have concentrated their efforts on simple
‘leisure’ shoes. The more complex mechanics
and materials used in performance shoes,
particularly cushioning synthetic foam,
make them a significant challenge in terms
of sustainable manufacturing.
The industry’s real heavyweights, Nike
and Adidas, have made moves towards
sustainable manufacturing. Nike’s Flyknitmaterial reduces waste and its Flyleather
is made from recycled leather scraps. The
brand says over 75 per cent of its shoes now
use some recycled materials and it is by
far the industry’s biggest user of recycled
polyester. Adidas, meanwhile, has partnered
with campaign group Parley for the Oceans
to produce a range of shoes with uppers made
from recycled ocean waste and has committed
to transitioning fully to recycled plastic
by 2024. This year it launched ‘Futurecraft
Loop’, its first fully recyclable sneaker,
made entirely of thermoplastic polyurethane
(TPU), which will be available in 2020.
In a way, the big players have been smartly
outmanoeuvred by the sustainable start-upbrands, not stuck with ‘legacy’ production (^) »
VIVOBAREFOOT
PROMOTING A
BACK-TO-NATURE
WAY OF WALKING,
VIVOBAREFOOT ALSO
USES A NUMBER OF
SUSTAINABLY-PRODUCED
MATERIALS, INCLUDING
AN ALGAE-BASED
FOAM CALLED BLOOM.
‘ULTRA III BLOOM’, £75
ALLBIRDS
WITH A $1.4BN VALUATION
AND CELEBRITY
INVESTORS, ALLBIRDS
RIVALS VEJA AS THE
POSTER BRAND FOR
SUSTAINABLE SNEAKERS.
ITS MATERIALS INCLUDE
EUCALYPTUS FIBRE.
‘TREE TOPPERS’, £115
NOVESTA
FOUNDED IN SLOVAKIA
IN 1939, NOVESTA USES
NATURAL RUBBER SOLES,
WHICH ARE MACHINE-
PRESSED ON COTTON OR
LINEN UPPERS, WITHOUT
USING TOXIC GLUES.
‘STAR MASTER SUEDE’, €69
EVERLANE
THIS E-COMMERCE
DARLING’S ‘CARBON
NEUTRAL’ SNEAKER
USES NATURAL AND
RECYCLED RUBBER,
RECYCLED PLASTIC,
AND LEATHER FROM
THE ‘WORLD’S
CLEANEST TANNERY’.
‘THE TRAINER’, $98
Intelligence