{"id":7140,"date":"2019-12-11T16:58:41","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T13:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7140"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:45","slug":"your-sneaker-game-is-part-of-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/12\/11\/your-sneaker-game-is-part-of-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Sneaker Game Is Part Of The Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most shoe racks in our homes are filled with shoes partly, or in many cases fabricated from plastics and plastic-like materials, from the squishy soles to the pointy heels to the knit polyester uppers to the brittle eyelet holes. Because of their construction- usually, the components are stitched and glued and moulded together in complicated ways-they are almost impossible to recycle. So sadly, your feet are only a stopover in their long, long lifetimes, before they pile up in landfills and float down waterways, often living on like zombies for hundreds of years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first\nstirrings of a shoe revolution are fomenting, though, and the industry is\nstarting to look hard at ways to build a better or more sustainable mousetrap\nfor our feet.  To understand the\ncontribution of our feet to a squishy mess of plastics we have to understand\nhow it all started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 19th<\/sup>\ncentury, shoes were made from materials found in the natural world. Wood for\nheels, tanned leathers for uppers and straps. Soles were rubber or cork, or at times\nchunks of wood carved to cradle afoot. But a shifting culture and materials\nscience was coming for shoes, as they came for everything else. So with time,\nplastics took over the shoe industry making a tenfold pair which ends up as\nwaste from the short life span a shoe made out of plastics harbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results\nwere tragic. We now talk about greenhouse gas emissions and the plastic menace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nike’s Earth Day Collection source; SBD<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Planet or plastic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsolution to the feet menace, rubber. A new chemical process that kept rubber\nstable at warm temperatures- vulcanization- was invented in the 1800s. that\nstable rubber quickly made its way into tires, like seals on steam engines- and\nonto the soles of shoes. This original rubber that went through the process of\nvulcanization wasn\u2019t what we now think of like plastic. But in the middle of\nthe 20th<\/sup> century, natural rubber was replaced by synthetic rubbers-\na close relative of the plastic materials. Today, about 70% of all rubber used\nin manufacturing is synthetic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well,\nfashion drives innovation. It\u2019s a product of desire and design. Plastic and\nplastic-like substances have completely reshaped the footwear landscape. They\nhave made shoes better, lighter, faster, more comfortable and more accessible\nworldwide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can shoes be made in a way\nthat uses less <\/strong>planet\nchoking plastic?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some shoe\ncompanies are looking to the past to excise plastic. The trends in athletic\nfootwear design lately, is less plastic. Think Nike Flyknits, with their\nstretchy knit uppers. It is partly inspired by aesthetics, but also by\neconomics because it is cheaper to make a shoe that requires fewer pieces to\nglue or sew together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That design\nalso offers an interesting opportunity. A shoe that uses a variety of materials\nis tricky, if not impossible to recycle. So a shoe that uses only one material\noffers at least some hope of being recycled eventually. Adidas is working on\nmaking a shoe that fits these principles. Their \u201cfuturecraft loop\u201d sneaker, in\ndevelopment now, is made of one single material- thermoplastic polyurethane) that\ncan be at least partly recycled. Other brands are making shoes out of recycled\nocean plastics.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the\nlimits of plastic recycling are currently hard. It takes energy to collect the\nmaterials, remake them into their second existence- and in many cases, that\nsecond life is their last, so recycling extends the process but does not solve\nthe underlying problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future\nlooks stranger, from climate change to plastics everywhere. The creative\nsolutions will be necessary if we are going to kick our plastic habit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most shoe racks in our homes are filled with shoes partly, or in many cases fabricated from plastics and plastic-like materials, from the squishy soles to the pointy heels to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}