Recyclable clothing, footwear and equipment have long been the focus of attention, but forward-looking recyclable products and concepts are playing their role to strive for a fair share. It is reported that Nike hopes to make shoe recycling easier through its new ISPA link** This is a kind of non glue sports shoes, which can be quickly separated into three pieces at the end of its life cycle. It is basically pre classified for recycling.
Nike hopes to expand the project to make sneaker recycling a more common concept.
ISPA (full name: nikese for improve; scavenge; protect; adapt) link is not the first recyclable sneaker we see from a mainstream manufacturer, but it adopts a different strategy - relying on three independent parts to form a whole without adhesive or suture. According to Nike, adhesives make it difficult for shoes to be disassembled and recycled, so this makes them backward.
The pod on the one-piece link midsole fits closely with the matching holes on the soft upper to form the shoe body. The third and last piece is the shoelace, which is responsible for fastening the upper. Nike promises that the shoes are still flexible, comfortable and durable, but they adopt a new and more circular structure.
It will be interesting to see if link can last as long as traditional assembled sneakers. Although the recycling process itself is not as simple as throwing shoes into the roadside mixed trash can, the simple three-piece decomposition is expected to make it easier than manually classifying shoe types, pulling out metal eyelets and separating a variety of materials many times - especially for the owners of sports shoes, they only need to throw the fragments of link to Nike stores with recycling and donation centers.
In addition to promoting recyclability, the glue free structure of ISPA link also simplifies the production process. Nike said that there is no need to set the adhesive or use energy intensive processes such as heating and cooling, which means that the shoes can be completed with less resources in about 8 minutes.
ISPA link will be launched in June, and there will be more crazy looking ISPA link axis in 2023. Nike plans to expand the scale of the sports shoe recycling project to cover more audiences, and will also move towards its larger sustainable development goal.
