https://spinnovagroup.com/Shoes have a large environmental impact; every year we produce 21 billion pair of shoes worldwide and 95% of those ends up in the landfill. Such massive production of shoes is linked with high CO2 emissions, enormous water consumption and the use of highly toxic products. A vast shift towards sustainability is a must. Yet, most fashion houses tend to focus on formal developments, rather than on process and material innovation, giving sustainable solutions the cold shoulder.

While fast fashion has glamorously taken all the negative publicity around sustainability, the new age shoe industry’s havoc rarely gets mentioned.

Is it really possible to design zero waste fashion products..well it is possible nahi toh hum yeh episode shayad record nahi karte hai na :D

Kristel Peters has laid down the following 3 steps for zero waste design,

1. The design of the shoe should be modular and ready made for disassembly and reduce the components of a shoe vastly.

2. The materialisation of the shoe must be zero waste.

3. The shoe is to be looked at as a service, not as a product.

Beautiful isn’t it?

Leather and different variants of leather form an important part of the shoe industry and I believe each one of us are aware of the environmental & sustainability harms that the leather industry brings in..yet because shoes are a basic necessity ..its flaws rarely get the spotlight. But we are here to discuss solution.

A fabulous solution brought in by textile innovators Spinnova.

Spinnova are a Finland based company who are transforming the way textiles are made globally.

It all started in 2009 at Technical Research Centre of Finland’s (VTT) cellulose expert Juha Salmela was researching nanocellulose. He attended a conference in Oxford university and heard a presentation from a leading spider researcher, who explained the similarities between spiderweb’s protein and nanocellulose.

That’s when an idea came to Juha: what if wood fibre could be spun into textile fibre in a similar way to this natural process? The professor immediately thought it was something Juha should look into and develop.

Since then they have been on a mission to create a more sustainable textile industry. One where cellulose-based materials are a cost-efficient, environmentally friendly and preferred option for brands.

Their innovation, if absorbed and adopted well, has a massive potential to transform the world of fashion. And while we were on the topic of shoes, Spinnova and their partnership with ECCO leather partner KT Tradings have together disrupted old ways and closed the loop on leather materials. They have innovated a fabric that is made out of leather wastes. This natural leather fabric is made from leather waste without harmful chemicals.

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