Biodegradable athletic footwear

Biodegradable athletic footwear is athletic footwear that uses biodegradable materials. It is a sector within the topic environmental impact of fashion.

Problem of non-degradable waste

The United States athletic shoe market is a $13 billion-per-year dollar industry that sells more than 350 million pairs of athletic shoes annually.[1] The global footwear consumption has nearly doubled every twenty years, from 2.5 billion pairs in 1950 to more than 19 billion pairs of shoes in 2005.[2] The increase in demand for athletic shoe products have progressively decreased the useful lives of shoes as a result of the rapid market changes and new consumer trends. A shorter life cycle of athletic footwear has begun to create non-degradable waste in landfills due to synthetic and other non-biodegradable materials used in production. The considerable growth in industrial production and consumption has made the athletic footwear industry face the environmental challenge of generated end-of-life waste.

Ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer

Biodegradation of polymers[3] is relevant to environmental impacts of athletic shoes. The athletic shoe midsole, one of the main contributors that lead to a generation of end-of-life waste, is composed of polymeric foams based on ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA).[2] EVA is a polyolefin copolymer of ethylene and vinyl acetate that provides durability and flexibility. EVA undergoesthermal degradation to acetic acid and hydrocarbons:[4]

-CH2CH2CH2CH(O2CCH3)CH2CH2CH2- → -CH2CH2CH=CHCH2CH2CH2- +HO2CCH3
-CH2CH2CH=CHCH2CH2CH2- → various hydrocarbons

See also

References

  1. ^ Pribut, Dr. Stephen. "A Brief History of Sneakers". Dr. Stephen M. Pribut's Sports Pages. APMA NEWS. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  2. ^ a b Staikos, Theodoros; Heath, Richard; Haworth, Barry; Rahimifard, Shahin (2006). "End-of-Life Management of Shoes and the Role of Biodegradable Materials" (PDF). Proceedings of the 13th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering: 497–502.
  3. ^ Song, J. H.; Murphy, R. J.; Narayan, R.; Davies, G. B. H. (2009). "Biodegradable and compostable alternatives to conventional plastics". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 364 (1526): 2127–2139. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0289. PMC 2873018. PMID 19528060.
  4. ^ Costache, Marius C.; Jiang, David D.; Wilkie, Charles A. (2005). "Thermal degradation of ethylene–vinyl acetate coplymer nanocomposites". Polymer. 46 (18): 6947–6958. doi:10.1016/j.polymer.2005.05.084.
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