EarthDNA

Thank you so much Jasmin Malik Chua for such a fun interview -you captured the essence of this mission and the complex challenge we are embarking to solve at THE FOOTWEAR COLLECTIVE. https://lnkd.in/ejEpVMiB #footwearcollective #shoes #circulareconomy #footwearnews #sourcingjournal

Last January, the manager of MIT’s Fabric Innovation Hub, Yuly Fuentes-Medel, started getting calls from footwear companies. The businesses were scrambling to get a handle on how to make their industry more circular and sustainable amid growing pressure to deliver on climate commitments. As it happened, MIT had conducted one of the only publicly available environmental-impact assessments for running shoes — a decade earlier. Fuentes-Medel’s mind was blown. There seemed to be no consensus on what a sustainable or circular footwear industry even meant, and the sector was leaning on dated and limited information to try and solve fiendishly tricky challenges for one of the most complex products on the market. To try and unpack some of these hurdles, Fuentes-Medel hosted a summit for the sector at MIT a few months later. A key conclusion: Footwear companies needed to start working together to tackle shared problems and develop more sophisticated datasets to guide action. Read more by BoF's Sarah Kent.

We could not be more excited! Today we're launching The Footwear Collective! Our vision is to build a sustainable future for the footwear industry on the foundation of circular economy. And we are in a very good and courageous company with Brooks Running, Crocs, ECCO, New Balance, On, Reformation, Target and Vibram Group. This is the moment when we move into Action! Real collaboration is required across the industry from brands and retailers to suppliers, solution providers, investors and technologists. This is an invite to ALL who want to join our efforts to accelerate industry transformation towards a circular economy. Our awesome internal team: Yuly Fuentes-Medel Ph.D., Julia Viner, Lewis Campbell, Mark Flaa and Lasse Lindqvist - thank you for your tireless efforts to make this happen. P.S. Link to our press release in the comments. Powered by EarthDNA. #TFC #TheFootwearCollective #footwearcircularity #circulareconomy #zerowaste

THE FOOTWEAR MANIFESTO - This journey started with a phone call in my office at MIT, I quote "Yuly we are producing about 23 Billion pairs of shoes a year and we have no real circular global systems to decouple the business model, we need to go from linear to circular, it is an impossible mission, do you know anything about shoes? ", the same week Leslie Yan asked me to support her on her MIT thesis about building a circular shoe, then Karo Buttler joined the mission as my intern to facilitate an industry summit in MIT campus. The mission started and many answered the calls to action... YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE... "the shoe committee and contributors"!! Karo and Leslie, I am so proud of the work done, cannot wait to see your next inventions. Special thanks to ALL the industry experts (100's), who contributed to this document, We anonymized ALL YOUR answers for the industry to hear your voice as a collaborative effort LAUD. The time is now!! The result of this work was summarized in a report, we are giving the industry a wide perspective report on how to build a collaborative path to minimizing environmental impact. THE FOOTWEAR MANIFESTO - enjoy the read!! Read the news here https://lnkd.in/eNymhQCb My personal learning >> People want to do the right thing, the how is the hard part, my knowledge has always been at the service of those who want to build a better world and I found in the footwear industry a group of individuals with deep knowledge to reverse engineer the problem. Now that we identified the barriers we can work together and build a better future. All these months I haven't received less than support, built new friendships, kindness and gained a huge respect for this industry. I am convinced that this impossible mission will take my lifetime, but I feel the love of those who want to create change and those who are skeptical to challenge the solutions. Vamos!!! I cannot wait to tell you more about what is NEXT here.. direct MANIFESTO LINK to read here:https://lnkd.in/e7j9pep2 #circulareconomy #footwearindustry #shoes