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
Momentum in sustainable construction is now driven by tangible progress in materials and methods rather than declarations. The focus on reducing embodied carbon in materials and undertaking robust whole life carbon assessment is reshaping how developers, architects and engineers define sustainable building design. Initiatives such as the Reducing Plastics in Construction Summit reinforce the value of renewable building materials, eco-design for buildings and circular economy in construction frameworks to eliminate petroleum-based polymers and improve resource efficiency in construction.
Biobased composites, recyclable resins and modular approaches are being evaluated through lifecycle assessment tools that can accurately measure the carbon footprint of construction and inform sustainable material specification throughout each project stage. Digitisation is rapidly becoming integral to low carbon design and energy-efficient buildings. Advanced platforms now enable unified modelling of cost, performance and carbon, aligning lifecycle cost optimisation with environmental sustainability in construction.
TM2 Bygg’s software-led method illustrates how low carbon building processes built on data-driven insights help achieve net zero carbon buildings and deliver improved building lifecycle performance. At the policy level, regulators are reinforcing requirements for measurable reductions in embodied carbon and clear evidence of net zero whole life carbon outcomes. These shifts point toward an industry-wide transformation grounded in whole life carbon transparency and the adoption of BREEAM v7 and other sustainable building practices to standardise reporting.
The result is a market that values circular construction strategies, end-of-life reuse in construction and environmental product declarations (EPDs) as verification of a project’s environmental impact of construction. New renewable energy infrastructure, including next‑generation geothermal systems, could redefine the carbon footprint reduction potential of green building materials and low carbon construction materials. As baseload renewables expand, achieving carbon neutral construction and sustainable urban development becomes increasingly viable. The sector is moving beyond pilot projects toward a mature phase of green construction, integrating life cycle thinking in construction and decarbonising the built environment as core business practice.
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