Introducing circular economy system in the UK insoles market

This project is all about introducing a sustainable circular economy system in the UK insoles market. Today, the vast majority of insoles will go to landfill. Our project will create a new business model with a carbon neutral impact.

We plan to build a simple selling system where people will receive a discount off their next pair every time they return their old insoles. We will also create a subscription annual plan where they will automatically receive new insoles when they return their used insoles.

We will then take these old insoles, or any other insoles from other competitor companies, and make better/another use of them. We currently have a system in place to recycle off cuts from our post-manufacturing waste that goes back into shoe production. Also our returned insoles get cleaned and repurposed and donated to the homeless. However, in this project we want to take it to another level and increase dramatically the amount of old insoles which will be diverted from UK's landfills.

We will provide a simple method to return the old insoles together with reusable fully labeled and recyclable packaging to make the return process as easy as possible. The we will look at reusing, re-purposing or recycling the products depending on their condition. Re-using could include cleaning and sanitizing and reselling to alternate channels and markets or increasing our donations to charities like our partner charity Forgotten Feet providing shoes for the homeless. For re-purposing and recycling we have a plan to increase the recycled material into new shoes and also the project will explore recycling into a wide range of industrial and domestic applications like school playground mats, insulation for homes and fillers for shoes. We will give the old insoles new lease of life and create sustainable circular economy in the orthotic market.