The adidas FUTURECRAFT.LOOP
Have you ever wondered what happens to your worn-out sneakers when you throw them away? They will likely spend the next few decades decomposing in a landfill.
"You simply take it, grind it up and make a new one. But under the surface, it's extremely technical and complex."
According to the most current government statistics, eight million tons of shoes and clothing were sent to landfills in 2015 alone. As the trashed items break down over many years, they produce toxic greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide, contributing to global climate change.
The Lowdown
Sportswear manufacturer adidas was well aware of their industry's harmful environmental impact, so they set out to become part of the solution. A few years ago, they partnered with various companies to gather and reuse plastics from the ocean to make clothes and parts of shoes.
Then they wondered if they could take their vision a step further: Could they end the concept of waste entirely?
This ambition drove them to create a high-performance athletic shoe made with entirely reusable material – the new FutureCraft Loop. It's a shoe you never have to throw out.
"It's something that outwardly appears very simple," said Paul Gaudio, adidas' Global Creative Director. "You simply take it, grind it up and make a new one. I think that's super elegant and easy to understand. But under the surface, it's extremely technical and complex and it is quite literally a science project."
This project began with a group of engineers, material scientists, and designers trying to find a material that could be pliable enough to take the place of 10-12 different components normally used to make a shoe, yet durable enough to provide the support a running shoe requires. The team decided on thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a strong and versatile material that can be re-melted and re-molded even after it's solidified. The team worked for close to a decade on research and development.
Adidas FUTURECRAFT.LOOP
The result, Gaudio said, is an athletic shoe that doesn't compromise on quality and also won't pollute the planet. The wearer will likely notice the shoe feels different because it's welded together by heat alone.
"You feel a more direct connection [to the shoe] because you don't have the layers and glue," he explained.
Next Up
One of the next steps will be for adidas to engage with consumers to find out the best way to get them to return their used shoes for recycling so that they can, so to say, close the loop.
"We're trying to decide what that looks like," Gaudio said. "Is it a take-back program, is it a subscription mode? Do you return it at stores? So that's the next big challenge that we're working on and that's why we've started to engage people outside the brand in that process."
The FutureCraft Loop is in beta testing with a small group, but if all goes well, the shoe may be available for purchase in early 2021. The pricing hasn't been set, but Gaudio said that the goal is to make it affordable.
"If it's something that's too exclusive or unattainable," he said, "it defeats the purpose."
Open Questions
Although TPU is a completely recyclable material, the team at adidas is working to perfect the process.
"We have a passion to apply creativity and imagination to the problems of plastic in the oceans and the plastic waste."
"Each time you recycle something there is a change – a degradation and contamination," Gaudio noted. "So if I ground the whole thing up, can I make the exact same shoe again with this exact same batch of material today? No, but we can still recycle 100 percent of it. But we're working towards being able to take the knit upper and make a new knit upper."
Gaudio hopes that other companies will follow suit, although adidas is moving to develop ownership of their solutions, including the process behind making the FutureCraft Loop.
"We have a passion to apply creativity and imagination to the problems of plastic in the oceans and the plastic waste and that's what's driving us," he said.
Paul Alexander spent more than 70 years confined to an iron lung after a polio infection left him paralyzed at age 6. Here, Alexander uses a mirror attached to the top of his iron lung to view his surroundings.
Paul Alexander was one of several thousand who were infected and paralyzed by polio in 1952. That year, a polio epidemic swept the United States, forcing businesses to close and polio wards in hospitals all over the country to fill up with sick children. When Paul caught polio in the summer of 1952, doctors urged his parents to let him rest and recover at home, since the hospital in his home suburb of Dallas, Texas was already overrun with polio patients.
Paul rested in bed for a few days with aching limbs and a fever. But his condition quickly got worse. Within a week, Paul could no longer speak or swallow, and his parents rushed him to the local hospital where the doctors performed an emergency procedure to help him breathe. Paul woke from the surgery three days later, and found himself unable to move and lying inside an iron lung in the polio ward, surrounded by rows of other paralyzed children.
Hospitals were commonly filled with polio patients who had been paralyzed by the virus before a vaccine became widely available in 1955. Associated Press
But against all odds, Paul lived. And with help from a physical therapist, Paul was able to thrive—sometimes for small periods outside the iron lung.
The way Paul did this was to practice glossopharyngeal breathing (or as Paul called it, “frog breathing”), where he would trap air in his mouth and force it down his throat and into his lungs by flattening his tongue. This breathing technique, taught to him by his physical therapist, would allow Paul to leave the iron lung for increasing periods of time.
With help from his iron lung (and for small periods of time without it), Paul managed to live a full, happy, and sometimes record-breaking life. At 21, Paul became the first person in Dallas, Texas to graduate high school without attending class in person, owing his success to memorization rather than taking notes. After high school, Paul received a scholarship to Southern Methodist University and pursued his dream of becoming a trial lawyer and successfully represented clients in court.
Paul Alexander, pictured here in his early 20s, mastered a type of breathing technique that allowed him to spend short amounts of time outside his iron lung. Paul Alexander
Throughout his long life, Paul was also able to fly on a plane, visit the beach, adopt a dog, fall in love, and write a memoir using a plastic stick to tap out a draft on a keyboard. In recent years, Paul joined TikTok and became a viral sensation with more than 330,000 followers. In one of his first videos, Paul advocated for vaccination and warned against another polio epidemic.
Paul was reportedly hospitalized with COVID-19 at the end of February and died on March 11th, 2024. He currently holds the Guiness World Record for longest survival inside an iron lung—71 years.
Polio thankfully no longer circulates in the United States, or in most of the world, thanks to vaccines. But Paul continues to serve as a reminder of the importance of vaccination—and the power of the human spirit.
““I’ve got some big dreams. I’m not going to accept from anybody their limitations,” he said in a 2022 interview with CNN. “My life is incredible.”
