Closing the Footwear Loop
The “Closing the Footwear Loop” project is a major initiative led by Fashion for Good, bringing together 17 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, hinders the adoption of circular practices, leaving the sector lagging behind in circular innovation compared to other areas of fashion.
While consumers and the industry are increasingly calling for more circular solutions, the reality is stark: the most recent studies conclude that approximately 90% of footwear ends up in landfill, contributing to an ever-growing mountain of waste. Unlike other areas of fashion where innovation has been more readily integrated, footwear’s multi-material construction and complex design complicate efforts to sort, disassemble, or recycle effectively.
This challenge is exacerbated by a lack of reverse logistics infrastructure and the absence of design principles that prioritise circularity. Current practices largely focus on linear production models — manufacture, use, and discard — failing to address the lifecycle of products. The sector’s lag in scaled innovation compared to apparel underscores the urgency for systemic change, as the environmental consequences of inaction continue to mount.
While this complexity presents a significant hurdle, brands are already exploring innovative solutions, including material science advancements and take-back programs, to address these challenges and pave the way for more circular footwear. These individual efforts complement the collaborative work within ‘Closing the Footwear Loop,’ creating a synergistic approach to driving industry-wide change.
Executive Summary
Fashion for Good has launched Closing the Footwear Loop, a groundbreaking initiative to address the footwear industry’s significant circularity challenges. With 23.8 billion pairs of shoes produced annually, the complexity of multi-material designs and the lack of end-of-life infrastructure result in 90% of footwear ending up in landfills.
Closing the Footwear Loop 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, 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.
Innovators
Innovation Partners
Project Partners
Relevant Resources
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
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.
Other Projects
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.
Behind the Break 2.0
Behind the Break 2.0 is a targeted research initiative focused on addressing fibre fragmentation in textiles, building directly on the work started in Phase 1.0 (2024–2025), which tested the strengths and limitations of different methods used to measure fibre loss, identifying how much results vary between labs, and exploring what drives fibre shedding across three fabric types: cotton knit, cotton woven, and polyester knit. Phase 2.0 seeks to increase confidence in data quality, consolidate and refine existing testing approaches and knowledge across selected fabric archetypes, and deepen supplier engagement to support wider data collection within the space.
