Yahoo Lifestyle New Global Footwear Future Coalition Sets Sights on Sustainability
LONDON — Leaders discussed how to make the famously wasteful footwear business more environmentally friendly during the inaugural Global Footwear Future Coalition, a one-day symposium with speakers and panelists from brands including Clarks, Dune London and Vivobarefoot.
Footwear manufacturers, designers and academics flocked to Havas Village in King’s Cross on Wednesday to attend panel discussions and workshop sessions that aimed to look at the industry from all angles: social, cultural, environmental and economic.
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Daniel Rubin, founder of Dune London, said in his keynote address that “22 billion pairs of shoes go into landfill each year. Unfortunately, that footwear is going to be around for many millennia to come.”
Rubin added that “the other shocking statistic is that about 90 percent of that is footwear that’s only been worn for one year.”
He also said the high demand for affordable shoes has led to brands to use environmentally harmful and unethical production methods.
Other speakers discussed sustainability in the footwear supply chain. Those on the panel included Vivobarefoot’s Asher Clark; Jamie Hall, cofounder of Pentatonic, a business that helps brands transition into circular practices; founder of sustainable tannery Billy Tannery Jack Millington, and director of Manchester Fashion Institute’s Robotics Living Lab Susan Postlethwaite.
They talked about greener ways of producing shoes, from using regenerative and low carbon materials — such as vegetable-tanned, off-cut skins from goats and deer that would otherwise be thrown away — to potentially using robotics to disassemble and recycle old shoes.
Another panel was titled “Foot Work: What Your Shoes Tell You About Globalization,” which looked at shifting consumer demands that footwear businesses and manufacturers face.
Speakers addressed everything from how 81 percent of consumers don’t trust the sustainability claims of fashion brands to how to implement alternative, sustainable textiles industry-wide.
Jen Keane, CEO of sustainable textile manufacturer Modern Synthesis, addressed the slow adoption of material innovations.
“To produce to the industry’s scale, start-ups need certain amounts of financial commitments. The industry isn’t used to buying years in advance or to off-take agreements that say they’re willing to commit financially to taking these quantities,” she explained.
“We want to be able to get to that scale, but we can’t get there without that financial commitment. So, we’re working on that at the moment,” the CEO added.
The coalition was founded in January by author and designer Darla Gilroy, who invited designer Liz Ciokajlo; founder of Footwear Research Network Dr. Alexandra Sherlock; consultancy agency Gate One; Havas’ principal Joe Kearins; and creative commercial partnership specialist Sarah Byfield-Riches, to work alongside her.
The aim of the first symposium was to look at how to improve work that the footwear industry is doing around sustainability, material innovation and production.
“By having open conversations and endeavoring to reach consensus, GFFC believes that we can draw a line of sight from where we are today to where we collectively want to get to in the future,” said Gilroy in her opening address.
She said she hoped the symposium would be the first step to “identifying the incremental steps we want to take to make real tangible, measurable and importantly scalable change.”
After the panels, workshop sessions looked at popular culture’s influence on footwear; ways in which businesses can transform their infrastructure; improving knowledge sharing within the industry, and implementing sustainable materials.
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