Fashion brands and retailers including Adidas, Target and Zalando are to work together to help make shoes more sustainable and avoid footwear ending up in landfills.

Through campaign group Fashion for Good the brands are to look for ways to tackle footwear waste.

Other brands involved include ON Running, PVH Corp and Reformation.

Fashion for Good warns that around 23.9bn shoes are produced worldwide every year using 40 different components including TPU, EVA, PU and rubber.

“The industry faces significant challenges due to this high complexity of shoe construction,” said the campaign group.

“This combined with a low collection rate, results in a vast majority of discarded footwear ending up in landfills.

“Fashion for Good sees the need to address this challenge and focus on laying the foundation for footwear circularity as well as accelerating innovation.”

The brands and campaign groups investigation on footwear sustainability will look at key intervention points across the lifecycle of a show.

This will look at how they can be designed more sustainably and use alternative materials to EVA, TPU, EVA, rubber and leather.

Ways shows can be reused or be recyclable will also be looked at, including how they can be disassembled to reuse or regenerate the materials used.

Also being looked at is footwear’s traceability “for evidence to substantiate sustainability claims”.

“Fashion for Good and our corporate partners, including adidas, recognize the urgent need to accelerate innovation in footwear sustainability,” said Fashion for Good managing director Katrin Ley.

“Over the past seven years, we have consistently broken norms across various segments and are now leveraging our expertise to radically reimagine footwear.

“By doubling down on our efforts, we aim to drive circularity and validate sustainable solutions in a segment ripe for disruption.”

Adidas senior vice president of product operations and sustainability Sigrid Buehrle added: “Adidas has been a partner of Fashion for Good for over six years now. Through this partnership, we have collaborated on a number of different sustainable innovation initiatives that are benefitting the fashion industry.

“Now we want to build on this know-how and expand our focus into the Footwear space. Currently, there is a limited portfolio of low-impact materials which also meet the necessary performance requirements that are also scalable.

“We hope this initiative will help overcome some of these hurdles”

As part of the initiative Fashion for Good is “on the lookout for breakthrough sustainable solutions in the footwear sector” among firms, academics and researchers. They are invited to apply to its innovation programme by 20 September.

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