Scarpa Re-Shoes: How old mojitos become new ones | Sport Conrad Blog | Advices, Guides, News and Outdoor Equipment

Every year, over 24 billion shoes are produced worldwide. Over 24,000,000,000 shoes per year! Most of them end up in landfills at the end of their life cycle. Too difficult to recycle and the worn-out materials are too inferior. With the Re-Shoes project, Scarpa is testing itself on a circular model for the first time. From 15,000 pairs of discarded Mojitos, just as many new ones are to be created – each made from 50% to 70% recycled material. This shoe-to-shoe recycling is expected to reduce greenhouse gases by 52.4%, chemicals by 50%, water consumption by 65% and energy consumption by 54.5% compared to standard processes. Get involved! And drop off your old Mojitos at one of our three Sport Conrad stores in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Penzberg or Wielenbach. The collection campaign starts from June 8 2023 in our stores.

The problem with waste

“The amount of waste generated by used products is one of the major challenges facing the footwear industry. Shoes are complicated to recycle because they are made of a mixture of different materials that are very difficult to separate,” says Sandro Parisotto, chairman of SCARPA. To solve this problem – or at least take a first step toward a possible solution – the Italian footwear manufacturer is launching the Re-Shoes project. This aims to use shoes at the end of their life cycle as a source of new materials that can be used directly in the production of new shoes. To operate more sustainably as a company, Scarpa has committed to its own Green Manifesto with various sustainability principles. From long-life design with the possibility to resole shoes, to the use of recycled materials, to a predominant production in Italy, to savings in energy and other resources.

The solution with a shoe to shoe recycling

The Re-Shoes project is part of the LIFE program, where the European Union provides funds for environmental protection programs and measures against climate change, aimed in the period 2021-2027 to facilitate the transition of a circular, sustainable and energy efficient economy. Scarpa breaks down the project into three steps:

STEP ONE: COLLECTING THE USED SHOES

In the first phase, the project sees the involvement of SCARPA’s distribution network in some areas of Italy, Germany and Austria, collecting from consumers 15,000 pairs of used “Mojito” style shoes, one of the brand’s iconic products in the urban outdoor segment. Later, the collected shoes will become part of a virtuous recycling system that turns them into 15,000 pairs of new shoes, with a variety of recycled materials used in the new model between 50 and 70 %. Thanks to this process, the production of new shoes aims to reduce 52.4 % of greenhouse gases emission, 50 % of chemicals, 65 % of water consumption and 54.5 % of energy consumption, compared to standard production processes.

STEP TWO: RECYCLING AND REGENERATING

The project is based on a completely new paradigm for recovering leather footwear, to reduce its global impact on production. The process will be based on the selective breakdown of the leather through hydrolysis, and the liquid obtained will then be used to tan the new leather without adding chemical substances. The production of recycled leather will be based on the EVOLO® process (which SCARPA already utilizes for certain products), which currently reaches up to 20 % of the content used at the industrial level, with the possibility of increasing the amount up to 50 %.
Specific attention will then be focused on managing pre-consumer rubber waste generated during the process of cutting shoe parts, which at present is almost completely handled by waste-to-energy technology.

STEP THREE: THE NEW SHOE

The process of manufacturing new shoes intends to address pre- and post-consumer shoes waste problem by adding them to the regenerative logic and using secondary raw materials from regenerated waste to produce new models.
A completely new and high quality style of shoe will reach the market to complete a circular and sustainable process.

Collaboration is the Key

The establishment of closed-loop models only works through collaboration between different partners. Certainly, a product must already be designed as a circular product (in order to be able to separate and recycle the individual materials at all later on), and it needs partners in the upstream and downstream value creation stages. Thus, Scarpa collaborates with various partners in the different development phases, such as: SCARPA’s partners in the various phases of developing the Re-Shoes project include: Alma Mater Studiorum – Università Di Bologna (its role will be developing Design for recycling, testing, and characterization of materials and shoes, Life Cycle Assessment study); Sciarada Industria Conciaria (separation of materials and hydrolysis of leather, EVOLO process for the production of regenerated leather); Rubber Conversion (devulcanization of industrial rubber waste to regenerate new rubber); Rubbermac, (production of rubber sheets from secondary raw materials, separation of textile components and soles and conversion into components for new soles); Innovando (logistical campaign to collect used shoes); EPSI: European Platform For Sports And Innovation (networking and promotion).