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THE ECo SHoE - STILL JUST A DREAM?
Footwear Problems:
Material Diversity and Composites
The footwear industry faces the particularly challenging
task of offering ecologically valuable products in
combination with efficient utilisation of resources, because
a shoe represents a combination of widely differing
materials. Furthermore, only limited use is presently
made of ecologically valuable materials.
An automated separation unit for all materials would
give rise to certain ecological burdens. It would also
significantly increase disposal costs. Unlike in the electrical
and electronics industry, for example, which
processes noble metals whose recycling is definitely
worthwhile, footwear does not contain any high-price
materials. It is therefore questionable whether such
a sorting unit would be really worthwhile. If such a
separation unit for shoes were to operate profitably,
it could only do so by processing comparatively large
amounts of waste. That would create disposal problems,
above all for SMEs. In addition, only thermoplastics
and metals would be to some degree recyclable,
all the other waste could only be utilised thermally. It
would also be necessary to demonstrate that the energy
generated exceeds the amount of energy invested
in the separation process.
01.2011
Magazine of the Test and Research Institute Pirmasens
Project partner of PFI is the Western Palatinate Institute
of Plastics Engineering on the Pirmasens Campus
of Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences
Conventional approaches to the recycling of industrial
wastes from footwear production are based either on
the principle of reutilising certain classes of substances,
which can be admixed to a certain extent with new
material, or on the principle of thermal utilisation.
However, the (largely fossil) material resources would
be lost on combustion. At the same time, residues
proving difficult to dispose of, such as slag or spent
combustion plant filters, would also arise.
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