Closing the Footwear Loop
The “Closing the Footwear Loop” project is a major initiative led by Fashion for Good, bringing together leading fashion and footwear brands and their existing circularity programs to tackle the complex challenges of circularity in the footwear industry. The project aims to transform the current linear “take-make-dispose” model into a circular one.
What's the challenge?
The global footwear industry churns out an astonishing 23.8 billion pairs of shoes annually, a figure that highlights both its scale and its environmental footprint. Each shoe is composed, on average, of more than 60 different components, ranging from fabrics and plastics to rubber and adhesives, intricately assembled to meet performance, aesthetic, and cost demands. This complexity, however, has kept the sector behind the rest of fashion on circularity, and around 90% of footwear ends up in landfill.
Multi-material construction makes shoes hard to sort, disassemble and recycle. Reverse logistics infrastructure is thin, and design principles that prioritise circularity are largely absent. The industry remains locked in a linear, take-make-discard model, and the case for systemic change is only growing. This challenge is exacerbated by a lack of reverse logistics infrastructure and the absence of design principles that prioritise circularity.
Executive Summary
Closing the Footwear Loop is a groundbreaking initiative to address the footwear industry’s significant circularity challenges. The project was born out of Pioneering the Future of Footwear and addresses multiple key intervention points: design for circularity guidelines; sorting waste for circularity technologies leading to increased reuse or recyclability; disassembly of various footwear components to reuse or regenerate materials; and recycling and creating value from high-value materials.
Building an infrastructure and foundation for footwear circularity is key. This initiative aims to transform the linear production model into a circular system by mapping European footwear waste streams to assess recyclability, developing a roadmap for circular design principles to improve durability and repairability, and validating innovative end-of-use solutions through trials and impact assessments.
Goals of the Project
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Mapping European post-consumer footwear waste streams: to gain a clear understanding of the current state of footwear waste. This will involve a detailed analysis of waste volumes, material composition in the waste flows, and the proportions of rewearable versus non-rewearable items (in collaboration with Circle Economy).
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Developing circular design principles: to establish a comprehensive roadmap for circular footwear design, including the development of guidelines and criteria for circular and safe inputs and materials, recyclability, durability and repairability (developed with Fashion for Good Alumni circular.fashion)
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Scouting and validation of end-of-use innovations: to validate promising technologies and business models for the end-of-life of footwear. This will include conducting trials and impact assessments to identify scalable solutions and overcome current bottlenecks.
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Sharing of Best Practices: Participating brands will share learnings and best practices related to their own circularity initiatives, contributing to a collective knowledge base and accelerating the development and implementation of effective solutions.
Circularity Quick Sheet
In Phase 2 of Closing the Footwear Loop, Fashion for Good, in collaboration with circular.fashion, developed the Circularity Guidance Quick Sheet to help cross-functional teams – not only designers, since circularity touches many roles.
What is it? The Circularity Quick Sheet is a recommended roadmap and key actions across three footwear archetypes to help onboard your organisation, initiate internal strategy and implementation, and spark collaboration for circularity. The guidance is tailored to the following footwear archetypes:
- Leather Boot
- Running Shoe
- Lifestyle Sneaker
Innovators
Innovation Partners
Project Partners
FAQs
Why has footwear lagged behind apparel on circularity?
Footwear is structurally harder to make circular than apparel. A single shoe typically contains 60 or more components across multiple material families (textiles, foams, rubber, plastics, adhesives, metal hardware), bonded together by construction methods designed for performance and cost rather than end-of-use recovery. That complexity makes sorting, disassembly and recycling significantly more difficult than for a garment made largely from one or two fibres. It also means circular design priorities shift depending on how a shoe is built and used, so the sector needs guidance tailored by product archetype (leather boot, running shoe, lifestyle sneaker) rather than one fixed standard. On top of the product itself, the sector is missing much of the reverse logistics infrastructure that apparel has built over the last decade, and until recently has lacked shared design principles for what circular footwear should even look like. Closing the Footwear Loop is designed to address these gaps in parallel: mapping the waste streams, defining the design principles and validating the end-of-use technologies.
What does circularity in footwear actually mean?
Circularity in footwear means moving away from the linear “take-make-dispose” model and towards a system where shoes are designed, used and recovered in ways that keep materials in circulation. In practice, it rests on four connected pillars: circular inputs with safe, renewable, and recyclable materials,, design for material circulation enabled through reduced material complexity and component separation; design for longevity through physical, aesthetic and emotional durability plus repairability; and enabling circulation with the systems, data, and customer engagement needed to keep products and materials moving through resale, repair and recycling. Circularity is not one technology or one design choice, but the alignment of design, materials, infrastructure and business models across the value chain.
Why does footwear circularity require a value-chain approach?
No single actor can close the footwear loop alone. Circularity depends on decisions made at the design table, choices made in material sourcing, the construction methods used on the factory floor, the collection and sorting infrastructure that exists (or does not) in each market, and the recycling technologies available at end of use. Closing the Footwear Loop is built as a pre-competitive project precisely because these dependencies cut across brands, manufacturers, recyclers, sorters, policymakers and researchers. Aligning the value chain around shared data, shared design principles and validated technologies is what makes systemic change possible.
Relevant Resources
Pioneering the Future of Footwear: A New Initiative by Fashion for Good
Fashion For Good Partners With Adidas, On and More Brands to Make Footwear’s Supply Chain More Sustainable
The Amsterdam-based platform for sustainable innovation is rolling out a new initiative designed to help shoe brands and retailers make their sourcing and manufacturing processes more environmentally-friendly.
Bending The Adoption Curve: Next-gen Materials To Reach 8% Of Fiber Market By 2030
Fashion for Good Partners adidas, Inditex, Target & Zalando Join Forces with FastFeetGrinded for Circular Footwear
Other Projects
DW(O)R-X
Durable water- and oil-repellent repellency (DW(O)R) finishes are chemical treatments applied to textiles and footwear to keep materials dry, clean, breathable, and durable. Historically, these finishes have relied on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). However, PFAS are highly persistent, accumulate in the environment and in human bodies, and are associated with harmful health and ecological effects. Increasing regulatory restrictions, combined with brand sustainability commitments and rising consumer awareness, are accelerating the shift toward PFAS-free alternatives.
Sorting for Circularity Rewear
Fashion for Good expanded its Sorting for Circularity framework to address the challenge of sorting for rewearable textiles to understand better their resale potential and the demand across the second-hand market. We launched an 18-month initiative in January 2024 in collaboration with Circle Economy, brand partners adidas, Inditex, Levi Strauss & Co. and Zalando to enhance the sorting of rewearable textiles using innovative AI technologies. The project seeks to improve garment recovery for resale, promoting circularity in the fashion industry.
Behind the Break
Behind the Break is a multi-phase research initiative developed by Fashion for Good in collaboration with The Microfibre Consortium. The project takes a research-led approach to advance the fashion industry’s understanding of fibre fragmentation, addressing uncertainties in existing testing protocols and key knowledge gaps. By supporting the development of a more credible and consistent foundation, the initiative aims to enable stakeholders to make informed decisions and take decisive action to mitigate fibre fragment pollution, while leveraging the best available science.
