I’m all for recycled materials. Make my shirt or casual shoes out of recycled materials.
But like most runners, I’m walking a tightrope to avoid injuries when I run. If you tell me they are made of recycled materials, all I hear is, “they aren’t quite as good as they could be, but that’s cool because they are green. Be happy with worse shoes.”
I’ll pass on running hundreds of miles on shoes with recycled materials.
I've noticed this trend recently in running shoe descriptions. I don't know enough about the materials and the process of making them to say whether or not this is a negative or not. I think it's a valid question/concern though and I'd be interested in knowing more about it. Maybe one of the posters before me can offer some facts/info to put your mind at ease rather than just snide remarks?
For what it's worth, I notice the description for the Nike Vaporfly doesn't mention anything about being made from recycled materials.
I'm very liberal, recycle as much as I can, and I'm all for recycled materials, but I've also questioned whether the integrity of recycled foam is the same as the non-recycled counterparts in running shoes. I particularly wondered this for the new recycled Nike Pegasus Turbos. I don't know why these posters are so up in arms over this question - I think it's a fair one, and I haven't seen any facts to prove an answer either way.
I’m all for recycled materials. Make my shirt or casual shoes out of recycled materials.
But like most runners, I’m walking a tightrope to avoid injuries when I run. If you tell me they are made of recycled materials, all I hear is, “they aren’t quite as good as they could be, but that’s cool because they are green. Be happy with worse shoes.”
I’ll pass on running hundreds of miles on shoes with recycled materials.
Am I wrong?
The material including rubber and plastic go through the same manufacturing process and are heated, molded the same way.
I’m sure there is a youtube video that shows how things look when they are on the factory floor. Our shoes look like a total mess, recycled or not, as they are put together.
I used to work as an engineer for a company that made PET water bottles. Understand that PET is certainly not the same as the various materials in a running shoe. For a while we were using 50% recycled PET. It introduced a massive number of process issues. By the time I left the company they went back to only using 10% rPET (mostly due to the fact that China stopped taking American recyclables). On the consumer side, the bottles were effectively identical, but our scrap rates in the factory were much higher when we used higher ratios of rPET. This anecdote doesn't carry over too much into performance of recycled materials, but thought it might be an interesting addition to the conversation.
The recycled materials dont really make a difference in the shoe but there is no reason that the shoe should be more expensive then the same shoe made of new materials. example - alfaflys
I've noticed this trend recently in running shoe descriptions. I don't know enough about the materials and the process of making them to say whether or not this is a negative or not. I think it's a valid question/concern though and I'd be interested in knowing more about it. Maybe one of the posters before me can offer some facts/info to put your mind at ease rather than just snide remarks?
For what it's worth, I notice the description for the Nike Vaporfly doesn't mention anything about being made from recycled materials.
So here are a couple of thoughts
"Recycled content" is probably not what you intuitively think it is. Most people think that this means the vast majority of the shoe has come from plastic bottles and paper when the reality is that if you are lucky maybe 5-8% of the mesh, used on the shoe is a yarn made of recycled content and maybe (but unlikely) a tiny portion of the rubber outsole is too. Think about just the mesh example - if the mesh on it's own is maybe 30% of the total material used on the shoe and the recycled content is only 8% - then really how much of your shoe is "green"
The reason for this? Recycling materials isn't easy and the purity of the materials you recycle is critical relative to its end use. I always laugh at brands that claim that old shoes will be "recycled" because I wonder what parts exactly they think will be. You can't for example take an EVA midsole off a shoe that has absorbed a ton of crap over its lifespan and simply grind it up into something new. Same with an upper, a shoelace - all of it.
Also the cost of recycling is hard too. A lot of energy, a lot of water - the ultimate cost to the environment is almost net zero vs using virgin materials. It's just the way it is. Also remember all the brands your buy from don't make their own materials. Their factories source them from other suppliers who care about their margins and their profit. A lot of the time when you hear a brand talking about "recycled materials" in their shoes it's because the materials they choose are marketed as such and it's just an "ask no questions" situation. Trust me on this one.
Final one - some of the shoes that you see marketed as "recycled" will actually look recycled to you (like some brands with midsole that look like they are comprised of random globs of materials) Don't believe everything you see or are told. A lot of these midsoles are made of virgin materials manufactured to look recycled with again, that small amount of "reused" material in it so it passes the legal claim of a midsole with "recycled material". 1% or 100% recycled content in a midsole counts as "containing recycled content" in the eyes of the law here.
Honestly if you really care about environmental impact with your footwear buy the pair of shoes that lasts the longest no matter how it's made and really wear it as long as you can without hurting yourself. Quite simple.
How do they clean the stuff before recycling it to make new stuff? For all we know, we are probably literally wearing someone's used toilet paper. No thanks. Recycling is dumb. A further insult is that anything advertised as recycled is more expensive
It's a marketing thing. For 99 out of 100 runners, every manufacturer makes a decent training shoe so making some part or even all of the shoe from recycled materials is just a way of differentiating their product from everyone else's shoes. Making people feel good about their purchase/product has a value. For people who care strongly about the environment (and for those who want to virtual signal) then recycled shoe material is a good selling point.
In my running shoes, I want fit, comfort, performance, value, injury prevention, grip, and so on. After forty-seven years of running, my feet are so damaged that it's hard to find a shoe that doesn't aggravate an old injury. If it happens to be a shoe make from recycled plastics, that's great, but it's not a selling point to me personally.
I’m all for recycled materials. Make my shirt or casual shoes out of recycled materials.
But like most runners, I’m walking a tightrope to avoid injuries when I run. If you tell me they are made of recycled materials, all I hear is, “they aren’t quite as good as they could be, but that’s cool because they are green. Be happy with worse shoes.”
I’ll pass on running hundreds of miles on shoes with recycled materials.
Am I wrong?
I loved the original Peg Turbos. I eagerly waited for the new ones to come out. I bought them and have run in them. The laces are almost as harsh as having barbed wire for laces. The material has no give and you either have to run in loose shoes or does with the laces digging into your feet. Also, they feel a bit like bricks.
I gotta say, I'll donate to green causes and plant tress, but I want shoes that don't sacrifice in the name of the planet.
Recycled materials are like if they're using a 5 x 10 sheet of foam and they cut a circle there are extra material around that they then smush together to make a shoe. I'm surprised they weren't doing this before honestly.
However if your looking for shoes to PB in and something like the "alphafly nature" becomes the product where it's heavier and more expensive then that's a poor sales approach for me.
