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Industrial collaborators:
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Nike
C & J Clark International Ltd.
Pentland Group plc
Tesco plc
Next Retail Ltd
Terra Plana
Textile Recycling Association
The European Recycling Company Limited
LMB
Soletec Systems Limited
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The global footwear market generated total revenues of £ 78.2 billion in 2005 and
this is projected to reach £ 95 billion by 2010 (Datamonitor 2006). Consumer expenditure
on footwear in the EU-25 was £ 43.1 billion while the figure for the UK was £ 5.1
billion in 2003. The footwear industry is a manufacturing sector which utilises a
wide variety of materials and processes to produce a range of distinctly different
products, from sandals to more specialised safety footwear. Over the last 20 years,
the footwear sector has placed significant effort in improving material efficiency,
as well as eliminating the use of hazardous materials during the production phase.
However, the environmental gains made in production are being overtaken by the considerable
increase in the demand for footwear products. Worldwide footwear consumption has
doubled every 20 years, from 2.5 billion pairs in 1950 to more than 19 billion pairs
of shoes in 2005 (World Footwear 2007). Additionally, the worldwide per capita consumption
of footwear has also considerably increased, from 1 pair of shoes per year for every
person in the world in 1950 to almost 2.6 pairs of shoes in 2005. In the European
Union, footwear consumption has increased by 22% from 2002 to 2005 to reach 2.3 billion
pairs of shoes , from which around 330 million pairs are sold every year in the UK
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In the EU, it is estimated that the waste amount arising from post-consumer shoes
could reach 1.2 million tonnes per year. From this post consumer shoe waste a small
proportion is being recycled in each Member State, mainly through reuse and redistribution
of worn and unwanted shoes to less developed countries by charitable organisations
such as the Salvation Army Trading Company (SATCOL), Oxfam or other private companies
such as the European Recycling Company and Lawrence M Barry & Co (LMB). However,
there is a strong debate about the impact of such reuse activities in terms of their
overall environmental and economic consequences for the local communities which receives
these post consumer shoes (Wicks et al. 1996). The vision of ‘Zero Waste to Landfill'
remains as one of the major challenges of 21 st century in many industrial sectors.
In footwear sector, this vision presents a very ambitious target as currently less
than 1% of the 19 billion pairs of shoes produced worldwide every year is recycled
or reused. This creates approximately 12.7 million tonnes of post-consumer (end-of-life)
shoe waste that is currently being disposed in landfills around the world.
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The overall aim of this adventurous research project is to investigate the novel
design and recycling processes required to underpin the achievement of the vision
of “Zero Waste to Landfill” in Footwear sector and to develop business models that
support the realisation of a sustainable shoe recovery value chain. Mr. Niall Campbell,
the chief executive of British Footwear Association, describes the scope of this
project as “very ambitious and not about minor incremental adjustments” to the existing
limited recycling activities in this sector.
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