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FastFeetGrinded is developing a solution to recycle shoes- Business Insider
Shoes have proven difficult to recycle, but one Dutch company thinks it has found the perfect formula to sustainably break down footwear.
Nearly 50 billion shoes are produced worldwide every year, and almost all of them eventually find their way into a landfill, Business Insider previously reported. Typical running shoes contain about 40 different parts made from several different materials, including, plastic, rubber, metal, and ethylene-vinyl acetate (foam), among others.
Mass-produced shoes are typically held together with extremely powerful glue, which makes them very difficult to recycle because the glue can contaminate the other recyclable materials.
But Danny Pormes, the CEO and founder of FastFeedGrinded, told BI his company has found a way to recycle every part of a shoe’s material. The company, through its unconventional methods, is able to process up to 2,500 shoes per hour.