Adidas Plans To Produce Infinitely Recyclable Football Boots

The football fan of the future will never wear old boots again. Adidas is launching a three-year research program to produce football boots that can be repeatedly recycled without using chemical adhesives and without creating waste. What's this all about?

Current sports performance products are predominantly made from brand-new materials and a rarely using any recycled materials. Only few parts of today's football boots are actually using recycled materials. So it's remarkable that Nike highlights that their indoor football boots use Nike Grind, which is obtained from recycled Nike Shoes, in the toe box area for additional durability.

Adidas Announce Sports Infinity - Infinitely Recyclable Soccer Cleats

The new Adidas project is funded by the European Union, officially called Adidas Sports Infinity. The project assembles experts from a variety of industries to develop a “super-material” that can be used to produce performance sports gear, and later be broken down and remolded repeatedly.

According to the German brand, the "football boots of the future could contain everything from carbon used in aircraft manufacturing to fibres of the boots that scored during the World Cup."

Gerd Manz, Vice President Technology Innovation at adidas, said: "This is a game-changing development for football fans. Over the next three years, Sport Infinity aims to end the days of throwing away football boots. Instead, every pair of boots is not just recycled but reimagined to the consumer's most personal specifications."

The first concept boot produced by Adidas through this new cooperation was not not significantly different from Adidas' current non-green shoe collection. The yarn used for the shoe upper was indeed made of fibers from waste plastic and fishing nets, but the sole was still made out of newly manufactured plastic.

However, Adidas said it hopes "to use the new material in anything from soccer cleats to performance sportswear and soccer balls, eventually offering customers the chance to hand in their old products and recycle them into custom-made new ones."

Adidas Sports Infinity will definitely not change the design of football boots forever, but addresses a fundamental problem in the sports industry. And that is at least as important.