It’s always been our ambition to not just create the most sustainable shoes with todays techniques but to also study what could be the most sustainable way to produce footwear in the future. So around two years ago we started exploring 3D printing and how that can be used within the footwear industry and at the same time we saw at first hand the amount of textile waste building up here in Sweden and around the world. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to merge these two issues into one project so we teamed up with Stockholm University and a few other innovation hubs and started working on a way to collect and sort textiles, shred them and then turn them into a 3D printing filament. This of course was no simple journey but after lots of testing and adjustments we were finally able to 3D print what we think is the worlds first footwear made from recycled textile waste. We only printed a sandal style to start with so we can find out how the material wears and performs but the early feedback from our wear testing has been very positive and we can now advance to fine tuning the material and printing more footwear styles such as sneakers and rain boots. We hope to be able to launch our first 3D printed shoes made from recycled textile waste into the market by 2024 as well as releasing this ground breaking material in both filament and composite form to the mass market.
Scandinavian MIND recently interviewed our Founder Chris Margetts about this project and you can read the full article here