Like clothing, footwear is a complex product, but its composition tends to be even more heterogeneous. Multiple materials (leather, textiles, elastomers, plastics, metals, etc.) and multi-layered components make sorting and recovery more difficult. Rigorous upstream sorting and precise knowledge of footwear composition are therefore essential to speed up the identification of materials for efficient industrial recycling.

To better understand the challenges of footwear recycling, the existing technologies, and the players in this sector, see our dedicated page: https://pro.refashion.fr/en/recycler/shoe-recycling.

Refashion has conducted also a study into the recycling solutions for shoe soles in Europe that contains a list of existing solutions, recyclers’ specifications and also results from trials carried out on 3 closed loop recycling solutions for two sole material types:  https://pro.refashion.fr/en/recycler/shoe-recycling or link of the study.