The following is an extract lightly edited from this article on fast company:
“In 2020 Adidas and the sustainable, direct-to-consumer shoe brand Allbirds announced they were teaming up to make the most sustainable sneaker ever, called the Futurecraft.Footprint.”
” While an MIT study from 2013 found the average sneaker had a 13.6 kg CO2 footprint—about the same as eating about 3.5 Big Macs—the Futurecraft.Footprint comes in at 2.94 kilograms of CO2 per pair.
“The shoe’s materials are a literal fusion of Adidas and Allbirds technology. The upper—the fabric top of the shoe—is made from 70% Adidas’s recycled Primegreen polyester and 30% natural Tencel, a material made from wood pulp that Allbirds uses in its Tree line. The midsole—the bouncy foam at the bottom of the shoe—is a combination of Adidas’s Lightstrike polyurethane foam and Allbirds’ sugarcane-based SweetFoam.”
“The materials are undyed, which further saves on emissions. And yet, “it’s not just a burlap-strap brown,” as Jad Finck, head of sustainability at Allbirds, puts it. No, the shoes appear to be a true white that looks completely typical for a modern sneaker. That’s because, while materials like the upper are produced from trees, the purification process to make this textile also removes natural color”
” the stitches are influenced by the third major design goal of this shoe: for it to be as light as possible. “Weight is one of the overlooked levers of carbon footprint . . . probably the most powerful lever of reducing the carbon footprint of everything,” says Kajimura.”
