The Asolo company Scarpa, Italy’s leading manufacturer of mountain and outdoor footwear, has officially launched the first phase of the LIFE Re-Shoes project. This involves the production and marketing of a new model of the brand’s footwear, made through the collection, sorting and recycling of shoes that have reached the end of their life.
Re-Shoes was created for the purpose of developing a new business model to provide an alternative, circular and sustainable solution to the “end-of-life” management of shoes, with the hope that recycling practices can become the new standard within the footwear industry supply chain.
The project makes it possible to derive secondary raw materials from used footwear and production waste to create a new generation of high-quality recycled materials to be used directly in the production of new shoes.
Recovered components will be able to be included in a virtuous closed circuit belonging to the same production chain, instead of being used to make lower quality products or employed in sectors other than the original one.
This will decrease the amount of used footwear destined for disposal, minimize the use of virgin raw materials during production, and aim to reduce post-processing waste to zero.
This first phase will involve SCARPA’s distribution network in Italy, Germany and Austria, which will serve as collection points for 15 thousand pairs of used Mojito model shoes.
The collected shoes will subsequently lead to the production of as many pairs of new shoes, with a range of 50 to 70% recycled material use.
The leather recycling process will be based on selective dissolution through the process of hydrolysis, the resulting liquid will then be used to tan new leather without the addition of chemicals.
The production of recycled leather now makes it possible to achieve up to 20% recycled content at the industrial level, with the real possibility of increasing the amount to 50%. By using these leather processing technologies, the company expects to reduce greenhouse gases by 52.4%, chemicals by 50%, water consumption by 65% and energy by 54.5% compared to standard processes.
Specific attention will then be paid to the management and reuse of post-industrial recycled rubber waste generated during the cutting process of sole and midsole parts, components that are currently almost completely incinerated.

Source and image: it.scarpa.com

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