Adidas Futurecraft: Made To Recycle

We all know that Mr. Donald Trump believes that climate change is a hoax, and he is brazen enough to outright deny it. Thankfully, he might only be one of the very few whose belief system is such. I know the folks at Adidas aren’t. The German organization, that specializes in sportswear and related accessories, have come up with an ingenious way to ensure that while saving yourself from gaining a few extra pounds, you also help in saving the environment. The sneakers, known as ‘Futurecraft.Loop’, have been so designed that they can be used, returned to the store, where they will be completely recycled and transformed into a brand new product. With rising awareness and concern among people that majority of these products, after their use, end up in a landfill where they stay for days and end up harming the environment, the company has stepped up to combat this issue in their own way.

So how did they do it? Is there something acting as a substitute for plastic that has been used? For we know that plastic, a non-biodegradable product, has been used in making majority of the shoes across the globe. Adidas answered this in a simple manner: a substance known as thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) that has been created by the company, which runs through the complete shoe, right from the sole to the laces. The company spent a long time researching and developing materials that could serve the purpose, while also being performance running footwear. With a normal running shoe today composed of around 10-15 different materials, it is easy to see why they cannot be recycled- every composite material has a different recycling process, and it would be very hard to separate them. And that explains the use of a single material (polymer), with it being moulded into different forms that replicate the function of materials used in any general running shoe.

The shoe’s midsole has also been remade out of the TPU, with BASF, a chemical organization, contributing to this development. There is also a complete absence in terms of using glue for the ‘Futurecraft.Loop’, as that can make the recycling process quite hazardous and difficult. Instead, the components of the shoe were fused using a totally different process. The shoe is still in a ‘Beta mode’, with a couple hundred people being provided the shoe to check out. Also, only 10% of the material from one shoe will be used in making of the next one, with the remaining used for other Loop products, a step that might make the customers a bit confused. With the organization also involved in manufacturing shoes out of ocean plastic, called the Parley project, they can become real torchbearers in showing other such organizations a sustainable path to follow.