sustainability
Nike Awards Six Creative Solutions for Footwear and Manufacturing Waste
October 15, 2018
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In February 2018, Nike invited submissions for inventive responses to two pivotal sustainability questions: What can be made from footwear material waste? And how can the footwear recycling process be improved to ensure that higher quality, more versatile resources are created from footwear-related waste?
In reply to the challenge, Nike received more than 600 applications from 58 countries. Thirty-five of those were selected as finalists to create either new products using Nike Grind, a palette of premium materials (rubber, foam, fiber, leather and textile blends) recovered in the footwear manufacturing and recycling process, or to improve upon the recycling process itself. Five groups won the Design with Grind Challenge, and one group was awarded for its Material Recovery fix.
DESIGN WITH GRIND CHALLENGE WINNERS GALLERY
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Yogo is a unique line of yoga accessories developed with a wide assortment of Nike Grind materials by Jessica Thompson in San Francisco, California.
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Pdd_kicks, an assortment of climbing holds for rock climbing walls made from Nike Grind rubber granulate, were developed by two design students, Go Takahashi and Tuo Lei, working in partnership at Tama Art University in Japan and ECAL in Switzerland.
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Circular Cities created street safety products designed with a variety of Nike Grind materials. The products are meant to calm traffic, be easily recycled and disassembled for reuse, and were developed by a team of students in Brooklyn, New York: Cody Miller, Daniel Penge, Carla Ramirez Sosa, Megan Lighty, Elisia Langdon, Kyle Ramos.
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InShape Mattress is a vacuum mattress for people suffering from neurodevelopmental disorders, and is filled with Nike Grind fiber and rubber materials. The Milan-based team of innovators include Alberto Romano, Enrico Bassi, Federica Mandelli, Mariasilvia Poltonieri and Mattia Ciurnelli.
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Stuffed, a suite of modern, modular furniture made with Nike Grind fiber fluff, rubber granulate and blended cork, is designed by a team based out of London, England: Harry Ingrams, Lucie Pendered-Mazer, Max Ashford
MATERIAL RECOVERY WINNER
Brian Riise and John Gysbers (of SuMaRec) identified two new phases that could be added to the standard Nike Grind material recovery process: an additional material separation step that divides outputs based on their weight, and an extra material-grinding step. Together, these steps have potential to improve the purity of the material outputs that come from the Nike Grind process.
Solutions from both the Design with Grind and the Material Recovery Challenges are being considered for further development in partnership with Nike, Inc.
Find out more about what Nike is doing to close the loop on waste here.
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