Post-consumer waste management issues in the footwear industry

Currently, 17 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide every year, and this figure continues to rise. This creates an enormous amount of post-consumer (end-of-life) shoe waste that is currently being disposed of in landfill sites around the world. The research reported in this paper is an initial investigation into realization of a holistic approach to application of recovery and recycling in the footwear industry. The paper provides a brief review of the trends in the footwear sector regarding the amount of end-of-life waste produced, together with existing reuse and recycling activities. It also presents an integrated waste management framework by combining a mix of design and material improvements, as well as reuse, recycling, and energy recovery activities, and concludes by examining the challenges in establishing end-of-life product recovery procedures for post-consumer shoes.