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.
History
School
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Citation
STAIKOS, T. and RAHIMIFARD, S., 2007. Post-consumer waste management issues in the footwear industry. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 221 (2), pp. 363-368