Later this year, the footwear brand Reebok will launch the first plant-based athletic shoe. Bill McInnis, the vice president of Reebok’s Future Team, a team designed to innovate products and the processes of shoe production, said in a post on Reebok’s website that the company’s goal is to “clean up the entire life cycle of shoe making: from what shoes are made of to where they end up.” With Cotton + Corn, which is what Reebok is calling this initiative, the brand will focus on the development, use, and post-use shoe production cycles. Reebok plans to use sustainable materials to produce shoes that are still fashionable so consumers will buy them, and it is also focused on what happens when people are done using the shoes.
Textiles have a big ecological footprint with all the waste they produce, especially from the footwear industry. Shoes get thrown out and sit in landfills because the oil-based plastic used in most shoes is not biodegradable, but Reebok’s plant-based shoes can be composted when they fall out of use. The plant-based shoe’s top is made of organic cotton and the base is made of an industrial-grown corn called Susterra® propanediol that’s manufactured by DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products, with which Reebok has partnered. Then, that compost can be used in the soil, where new plant materials are grown for more shoes.
Americans throw away at least 300 million pairs of shoes a year. Photo by zibik on Unsplash
In today’s world of fast fashion, where the textiles industry produces waste in massive amounts, a plant-based shoe could do a lot to make the industry’s ecological footprint smaller.
— Jenna