Life GreenShoes4All – Footwear Environmental Footprint

One important step towards sustainability in footwear industries is to measure and tune the environmental impact a product makes throughout its life cycle. By performing a product's life cycle assessment (LCA), the footwear value chain can produce footwear more responsibly, economically and in an eco-friendly way by addressing the three pillars of sustainability. LIFEGreenShoes4All teams are conducting LCA studies in representative footwear models ranging from fashion to safety footwear, with uppers in leather or textiles; midsoles in polyurethane foam (PU) or ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA); soles in vulcanized rubber, thermoplastic rubber (TR), EVA and others. These studies make possible to identify and quantify the most relevant life cycle stages, contributing to the most relevant impact categories (e. g, climate change, resource use), helping companies on the definition of how their footwear environmental performance may be improved. Considering the results, the higher contributors are materials and components, followed by waste from manufacturing and end-of-life. The creative design phase plays a significant role in footwear life cycle sustainability impact. The implementation of eco-design on the product conception is crucial to reduce the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). LIFEGreenShoes4All is being developed by 9 partners AMF, APICCAPS, ATLANTA, CEC, CTCP, EVATHINK, ICPI, INESCOP, FICE and PESTOS (https://www.greenshoes4all.eu/).