WASTE.
WHY AIRCAPTURE SEEKS TO BE EFFICIENT

There is a estimated 300 million pairs of shoes discarded each year which means that landfills are inundated with shoes according to ‘WasteAwayGroup’’. All together the most demanded and popular footwear brands own 76.9% share of the footwear market— so you can only imagine why the severity of creating an alternative production process is really an important call to action. Many sneaker brands are readjusting their steps to a zero carbon and zero waste process by choosing recycled materials as it accounts 70% of any product’s carbon footprint. While these are great improvements there is still more work ahead. 

One of the largest environmental impacts of shoes come from the manufacturing side. Production stages accounts for producing large amounts of carbon dioxide which contributes to the already serious effects of climate change and global warming— and in these stages of manufacturing, large amounts of machinery and chemicals are required to produce shoes. On average, the production is regularly overlooked. An area that many brands doesn’t pay much attention too because majority of US manufacturing are held internationally. So we aren’t able to see the damage control. One shoe produces 30 pounds of carbon dioxide and that doesn’t even account for the amount of fossils used to start the machines.

To maximize the future of footwear there are ways to contribute and those ways are to develop new methods and assist it with knowledge needed to effectively implement within the footwear development process. One way that we imagine will take part in resolving the on going dilemma has no cost to society—but making the American shoe industry production effectively competitive with foreign suppliers and insuring the domestic market an adequate share of the growth. We believe in not only changing materials in which we use but also reimagining the entire footwear production process through our methodology called AIRCAPTURE® .

The method of AIRCAPTURE® Is an integrated tool that works in tandem with 3D/4D processes. Take a look at RLP (Rapid Liquid Printing) native printing process for a demonstration of the operation our R&D lab partners at RLP (Rapid Liquid Printing Co.) do through MIT Self Assembly Lab.