For runners, footwear is one of the most important – and often most expensive – pieces of gear. Experts say the typical lifespan of a traditional running sneaker falls between 310 to 435 miles, or about four to six months, depending on usage.
The shoe industry also comes at a great cost to the environment: from production to end-of-life, it generates about 700 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to research by Quantis, an environmental sustainability consultancy.
Footwear is notoriously hard to recycle because it can contain dozens of different materials that need to be processed separately. But Danny Pormes and his wife, Erna, decided to try and find a way to recycle shoes in their entirety.
"Everybody told us, 'it's not going to work, it's impossible,'" Pormes recalls. But after months of experimenting in their kitchen – which involved microwaving and boiling shoes, along with a few disasters – they finally came up with a proof of concept. From there, they partnered with a machine manufacturing company, Heilig Group, which helped bring their shoe recycling factory FastFeetGrinded to life.
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📸 : CNN
Efforts to decarbonise the built environment are accelerating, driven by a growing recognition that skills and knowledge are as vital as technology. Across the UK, the green workforce is being prioritised as a cornerstone of sustainable construction, with training in sustainable building design and whole life carbon assessment now central to professional development. Industry leaders warn that without adequate funding for education, progress in reducing embodied carbon and achieving low carbon design targets will stall. The focus on life cycle cost and lifecycle assessment is reinforcing the message that every decision—from material selection to maintenance—shapes the carbon footprint of construction and the sector’s path toward net zero whole life carbon.
Artificial intelligence is entering this transformation, exemplified by Greyparrot’s Analyser, recognised by TIME as one of 2025’s best inventions for its ability to identify and sort construction and demolition waste. The system integrates circular economy principles into real-time waste management, improving material recovery and reducing landfill dependency. Tools like this support circular economy in construction strategies and resource efficiency in construction by extending the life of low embodied carbon materials. With digital monitoring enhancing end-of-life reuse in construction, these innovations could prove decisive in achieving measurable reductions in embodied carbon in materials and demonstrating environmental sustainability in construction at scale.
At a policy level, the European Union’s latest revision to sustainability reporting regulations draws sharp lines between large and small companies. Limiting mandatory accountability to only major organisations could weaken the uptake of sustainable building practices among smaller firms, which collectively represent a significant portion of the industry’s environmental impact. Experts in environmental product declarations (EPDs) and sustainable material specification stress the need for consistent reporting across all tiers to ensure that carbon footprint reduction and circular construction strategies are embedded sector-wide rather than confined to flagship developments.
In the UK, the £2.9 billion transformation of the Sellafield site is being closely scrutinised as a potential benchmark for low carbon construction materials and green infrastructure integration. Public procurement at this scale has the power to drive net zero carbon buildings and eco-design for buildings through the supply chain, from renewable building materials to energy-efficient buildings that meet BREEAM or forthcoming BREEAM v7 standards. The government’s commitment to whole life carbon performance assessments on such projects could pave the way for broader adoption of sustainable building practices, embedding life cycle thinking in construction into mainstream infrastructure policy.
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