A new “biocircular” footwear brand has made its debut with a shoe six years in design and which aims to leave “no harmful trace” behind.
Co-founder David Solk’s father owned a footwear factory in England, and he has spent the last 30 years working in Asia, including as a head of operations for Adidas in the region. His aim was to develop shoes that are safe to compost – an outcome he said was harder to achieve than he initially realised, despite his extensive experience in the sector.
The Solk Fade 101 has been created with a chrome- and metal-free leather upper from a German tannery with “robust environmental management techniques”. The outsole is natural rubber and the lining is a custom-developed blend of compostable yarns and plant fibres that are 100% biobased. The laces and webbings have been made from Tencel wood pulp from sustainably harvested eucalyptus, beech and spruce trees. The shoes are manufactured at a company-owned factory in Vietnam.
Mr Solk explained: “A shoe isn’t truly what people call sustainable unless every stage of its lifecycle is considered: from the way materials are sourced and how it’s made, to how it ultimately returns to nature, ensuring that nothing nasty lingers. This is biocircularity.”
At the end of the shoes’ life, Solk will send customers a bag to return them in, and they will be added to a company-owned composter in Germany, where they will be mixed with food waste and other materials and turned into a compost. All materials have been screened against more than 200 harmful substances by a third-party laboratory and tested for safe plant growth post-composting.
Mr Solk added: “If someone doesn’t return their shoes and they end up in landfill, or even buried by the family dog, we want to be sure they’ll still break down safely and be ultimately harmless as well.”
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