Allshoes to spearhead an EPR for safety shoes

EPR = Extended Producer Responsibility

As market leader in protective footwear, we also take responsibility for our product at the end of its service life. The Circular Footwear Alliance (CFA), the collection initiative for used occupational and safety shoes which we cofounded, ensures that the shoes stay out of the waste stream, allowing the materials to be used as new raw materials. This is how we encourage the circular economy.

The Circular Footwear Alliance has grown significantly and was professionalised further in 2022, which includes the arrival of the CFA Officer. Partly due to this, as many as 128 new collection points were added in 2022!

From these collection points, the shoes are sent to a central location after which they are recycled. With so many different types of safety shoes, the dismantling process still has its challenges. Each shoe is constructed differently and often contains different materials. By partnering with dismantling partners, we are looking for the ideal way to recycle raw materials at the highest quality possible.

The next step within Allshoes is a focus on ‘design for dismantling’. In this process, we examine how to design a shoe that can be taken apart in just a few steps without compromising on the quality of the shoes.

Huge challenges, such as high-quality recycling, become easier when there is a solid support base. Through the CFA, Allshoes therefore wants to promote Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for safety footwear. This legally obliges manufacturers (and importers) to collect used safety shoes and return them to the chain. Currently, the textile industry is working hard on an EPR for textile (this includes occupational wear). We follow these developments closely and are inspired by them. In the coming year, we will also ask other safety footwear manufacturers to join the CFA as partners.

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>400 Pairs of shoes