Design Life-Cycle

 Alexander Boyko
Professor Cogdell
DES 40A
2 December 2021

Made From Trash: Raw Materials in Nike’s Space Hippie Shoes

Introduction

            In June of 2020, Nike released the Space Hippie four-shoe series set to radically reduce the brand’s manufacturing carbon footprint as part of its Move To Zero initiative aimed at a zero carbon and zero waste future of footwear.  Tasked with designing a zero-carbon shoe, Nike’s Innovation design team turned to Nike’s Sustainable Design lead, Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, for an idea which not only inspired the code name “Space Hippie” ("Space Meets Hippie" 2020), but also the design philosophy of the project.  “If you’re going to fly to the Moon, fly to Mars, and stay there and do something, you have to create things with what you find there” ("Space Meets Hippie" 2020), says Murphy-Reinhertz, describing a concept known as In Situ Resource Utilization (I.S.R.U.). For designer Haley Toelle, this meant creating a physical product by making prototypes with whatever materials are available ("Space Hippie: Prototypes" 2020). This notion of using what is available meant looking at what Nike had laying around, which led the team to Nike’s post-production waste and thinking about how to create a closed-loop, circular system of materials. As a result, Nike’s ground-breaking Space Hippie sneakers not only caught consumers’ attention with their unusual name, but also with their completely redefined production process. With circularity in mind, Nike’s Innovation design team connected raw material acquisition to consumer waste through the recycling of used products, landfill plastics, and re-use of excess factory materials to develop Nike’s transformative upcycling manufacturing to produce some of its lowest carbon footprint shoes to date.

Upper

            Combining Nike’s already-innovative Flyknit technology with the bulk of the shoe’s recycled materials by weight, the Space Hippie sneakers’ largest environmental impact comes from their uppers—the top portion of the shoe made from a material Nike dubs “space yarn” or “Space Waste.” According to Nike’s Innovation design team, the upper “‘is basically recycled bottles, recycled material scraps from the factory, (and) recycled post-consumer waste’” ("From Trash to Space Hippie" 2020) from T-shirts, all of which are shredded and spun together to create a more sustainable yarn. The process of creating this yarn was built off of Flyknit, a base material made from processing recycled plastic bottles into extruded polyester fibers that are then woven to directly fit a shoe’s exact specifications.

            To get usable recycled polyester, or rPoly (Rubin 2021), poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles have to first be collected and mechanically recycled through physically converting smaller plastic particles into fibers by melt-extrusion (Shen et al. 2010, 38). To do this, PET bottles are shredded into PET flakes, which are vacuum dried to remove any remaining moisture, melted, and spun into filaments that are then drawn, finished, and crimped (fed through rollers) to make the final polyester fibers (Majumdar et al. 2020, 2).

            Thus, Flyknit had replaced the traditional cut-and-sew method (“Circularity”) in 2012, and, as a result, significantly cut down on excess material waste and carbon emissions coming from the manufacturing process; however, to “‘take a plastic bottle, shred it, melt it, then re-extrude it’” (15) still required a large amount heat and energy, according to Murphy-Reinhertz. This is where the design team found a key use for other materials, whereby replacing approximately 50% of the rPoly in Flyknit with factory scraps and post-consumer T-shirts, the hybrid yarn gave the team a “‘70 percent carbon reduction versus typical recycled polyester’” (“Sustainable Shoe Design” 2021) because of the reduced energy consumption that came with shredding and twisting scraps together with extruded plastic bottles—a process requiring very little energy or heat.

Not only does the recycling and use of PET—a non-renewable, low-cost synthetic polymer—in fabric materials, such as Flyknit, save raw materials and the energy which go into its production (Majumdar et al. 2020, 2), but the addition of Nike’s own post-production waste furthers the potential impact of the shoes. Even with the 70% carbon reduction, however, the team’s initial zero-carbon goal still required further innovation in the materials and manufacturing techniques necessary to produce the remaining parts of the Space Hippie shoe.

Midsole

            The most creative solution of incorporating recycled waste and reducing Nike’s carbon footprint stands out in, arguably, the most surprising visual element of the Space Hippie series—a uniquely textured midsole made of a light blue rubber material speckled with colorful plastic particles. “Crater Foam,” as the design team called it, contains “‘about 10 percent Nike Grind’” material as a “filler within the oil-based foams that make up most shoe soles” (15). As they previously did with Flyknit, the team again took advantage of an earlier grassroots project “Nike Grind”—a 1994 initiative which still exists as the primary way for the company to “collect and recycle sneakers” (Barajas 2020) and, as of 2007, had “recycled more than 16 million pairs of worn-out and defective athletic shoes” (Staikos and Rahimifard)—to provide more sustainable material alternatives for creating the unusual Space Hippie midsole.

            Nike Grind is composed of two primary sources of excess material waste: “manufacturing offcuts” and post-consumer, “end-of-life” shoes  (Nike Grind 2020). The design team seems to have opted for incorporating materials from the latter, stating that the midsole added in “rubber and plastic waste from the manufacturing process” ("From Trash to Space Hippie" 2020) which gave its distinct imperfect texture. The closest relevant information on what exactly is collected can be found in the Nike Grind Materials Brochure, which details that the rubber comes from “rubber outsole components,” “rubber flashings,” “rubber granules,” or “rubber powder” (Nike Grind 2020); the plastic comes from laminated TPU, “(thermoplastic polyurethane) with Nylon” (Nike Grind 2020), the former made from an organic polymer and the latter from a synthetic polymer. According to researcher Kimberly A. Ames’ article in Rubber Chemistry and Technology, the use of TPU in a footwear application such as the midsole is justified given the rubbery material’s “excellent flex properties,” ability to be “easily colored,” and “excellent bonding to other materials” (Ames 2020, 461) like the infused rubber waste.

            In researching the secondary material (which gives the midsole its light blue color), there is little information directly from Nike or their design team on what specific “oil-based foams” went into the Space Hippie midsoles; however, a short video on the official Nike product page labels the light blue foam material as “ZOTE WASTE,” which is most likely associated with the British cellular materials company Zotefoams PLC. As of December 13, 2017, the company went into a “strategic partnership with Nike to develop footwear technology and supply materials” (Zotefoams 2018) which has produced the likes of the Nike Vaporfly NEXT% and Alphafly NEXT% running shoes in 2020 and 2021. Of these materials, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which of Zotefoams’ foam product waste is re-used to make the Space Hippie midsole, but there are two possibilities: Evazote® or ZOTEK® T—both of which are used in footwear applications.

            ZOTEK® T is explicitly mentioned by Zotefoams as the primary material used in Nike’s previous ZoomX midsoles, and is highly likely, therefore, the material used in the Space Hippie midsoles as well. In this case, the “T” in ZOTEK® T refers to “thermoplastic elastomers” (26). Elastomers are natural or synthetic polymers which have elastic properties; thermoplastic means they can be softened with heat and hardened when cooled down. For a midsole, a thermoplastic elastomer, or TPE, would most commonly refer to a rubber material. Researcher Kimberly A. Ames notes that “oils are used to improve processing” (Ames 2004, 426) of TPEs, which explains the previously-stated “oil-based foams.” Ames also adds that “inert fillers can be added to reduce cost” (Ames 2004, 426), which the design team accomplished by using Nike Grind material, both to reduce cost and the energy required to injection mold plastics—a process which already “greatly reduces the amount of waste” (Ames 2004, 465). The benefit of re-using rubbers from Nike Grind with TPEs is that the filler material has no detrimental effect on its properties, making it a sustainable alternative.

            On the other hand, Evazote®, a subset of AZOTE®, is a material made of “closed cell, crosslinked EVA copolymers” (“AZOTE®”). EVA stands for “ethylene vinyl acetate” (Ames 2004, 464)—also a common material in Nike’s midsoles—and is produced by copolymerizing ethylene with vinyl acetate, which contains an acetoxy group that “disrupts the crystallinity of the polyethylene” (Ames 2004, 465) to create a more rubbery polymer (elastomer) with better flexibility. The vinyl acetate group is also what makes the copolymers “crosslinked” (Ames 2004, 465). Nike Grind also collects excess EVA foam from the manufacturing process in the form of “EVA injection” scraps and “EVA flashings” (Nike Grind 2020).

            The sustainability of these materials is also important. Through Nike Grind, Nike has already made incredible strides, as one of the first major shoe manufacturers to cut down on its waste, in recycling post-manufacturing and -consumer waste to be used in projects like the Space Hippie. By using injection molding to make its midsoles, Nike also saves the “waste of 50% or more” (Ames 2004, 465) that came with using compression molding. For Nike's primary foam supplier, Zotefoams, Dr. Karl Hewson (Director of Technology and Development) says that “what we have is polymer, and that’s it” (“Technology”). “There are no chemical residues that compromise either the properties or the purity,” says Hewson, meaning that the company’s foams are purer and contain less additional chemicals than other foams might. Additionally, Hewson confirms that the cross-linked foams can still be recycled into themselves, supporting the statement that Nike Grind rubber is combined with “100% recycled foam materials” (Scrap 2020), although it has “proved more problematic” (“Technology”) due to the contamination of scraps sourced outside of the company’s own foam—an issue their team actively works to minimize.

Nike Grind rubber is also used to make what the design team dubbed “Crater Rubber,” used to make an “outer-sole” on the Space Hippie 03 and 04 models. Although it is made of the same exact materials infused into the foam midsole, the “really speckly, really grainy, really coarse-looking rubber” ("From Trash to Space Hippie" 2020) texture—without the added foam— separates it from the rest of the shoe.

On its own, however, using a mixture of Nike Grind rubber and plastic leftovers would not make for the comfortable cushioning and footbed of a typical midsole, which pushed the design team to look at other materials that could provide a good feel underfoot.

Additional “Midsole”

            To provide that extra layer of needed comfort in the Space Hippie sneakers required the design team to incorporate an additional “midsole” ("From Trash to Space Hippie" 2020) made directly from manufacturing leftovers of the brand’s ZoomX material, most well-known for its use in Nike’s record-breaking running shoes—a recent example being Eliud Kipchoge’s Alphafly Next% shoes that pushed him to achieve a sub-2 hour marathon time in 2020.

            When Nike made those shoes, and any other pairs using ZoomX, they knew they “needed to find another use for” ("From Trash to Space Hippie" 2020) the excess scraps that came from pattern-cutting the soles out of a sheet. According to Murphy-Reinhertz, this use ended up becoming the inner midsole of the Space Hippie, specifically “made from surplus ZoomX foam taken from the production of the Nike Vaporfly 4% running shoe” (Snowden 2020). Incidentally, the ZoomX material is also made from ZOTEK® T foam supplied by Zotefoams—a thermoplastic elastomer described in the previous section. By re-using these scraps instead of manufacturing completely new foams, the process produced only about half of the normal carbon required to make any typical Nike foams (Snowden 2020).

Shoebox

            The design team did simply stop with just the shoe, making sure to apply the same sustainable approach to the box the Space Hippie would arrive in—a new, single shoebox which replaced Nike’s traditional double box packaging. Made with “at least 90% recycled content” (“Space Hippie”), according to the official Nike product page, the box is made out of recycled brown cardboard material. With no further details on the specific components of this cardboard, however, it can be assumed that Nike uses a standard combination of corrugated cardboard, made primarily from milled pine trees, and glued together with a corn starch-based adhesive glue (Anoushiravani 2013).

Conclusion

            In a quote from the Nike Innovation design team, designer James Zormeir says that “we innovate through making, and to design through making, and to evolve through making and prototyping” ("Space Hippie: Prototypes" 2020) is what led to the inception of the Space Hippie. In designing solely through making a physical prototype—using whatever materials were available, refining existing manufacturing processes to lower their energy usage, and simply embracing the imperfections of recycled materials—the design team pushed past traditional conventions of shoe-creation to completely focus on sustainability. Although they didn’t end up achieving their initial goal of a zero-carbon shoe, the result was a carbon footprint of 3.7kg CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) to make the “04” model, compared to 12.5kg CO2e in a standard shoe (“Sustainable Shoe Design” 2021)—a difference of over three times less carbon. Beyond the metrics, however, Nike’s Space Hippie not only became a hallmark success of the brand’s sustainable innovation, but served as concrete proof for the footwear industry that a majority of post-manufacturing and post-consumer waste can be recycled into new high-quality products. “These kinds of projects shouldn’t be super-secretive. They should [help] people feel empowered.”—Haley Toelle, Space Hippie Designer (“Sustainable Shoe Design” 2021).

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Jackson Sams

Professor Cogdell 

DES 40A

2 Dec. 2021

Sole Power: Energy Use in the Nike Space Hippie Series

A truly sustainable product considers the impact that it makes in regards to the materials that are used to make it, the energy it consumes, and the waste that it produces. To analyze the processes that go into making a product sustainable, my group decided to research the Nike Space Hippie series. This product is a shoe series that Nike has produced using “trash” as their raw material source. The mesh upper portion of the shoe is composed of 90% repurposed material, the midsole is made of repurposed Nike Zoomx foam, and the outsole is made of recycled rubber scraps and outsourced foam (“Space Hippie”). The way energy has been used to manufacture and process these shoes has been innovative within the industry. Finding new ways to be environmentally conscious has allowed Nike to create a product that has pioneered sustainable processes that can be modeled in the shoe industry. The Nike Space hippie series has made leaps and bounds in the sustainability industry, saving significantly more overall energy than the average shoe with its revolutionary manufacturing and distribution processes involving the use of  repurposed material.

The manufacturing of The Nike Space Hippie series has shown many sources of energy conservation that have set a precedent for the industry. In the shoe’s production, Nike repurposes its factory materials; waste is used as the raw materials for the shoe, saving energy on material acquisition. The company uses cloth scraps combined with other factory floor materials and recycled plastic polyester for the mesh upper portion of the shoe. The cloth material is split up into yarn and knitted. The process doesn’t require heat which saves on energy. The 4D knitting machine/cnc knitting machine used to form the mesh also cut waste by 80% (Fink 20). Many other shoe manufacturing companies switched to this method of mesh upper development for this reason. Additionally, “Energy savings of 0.48 kWh are provided per pair of shoes” for CNC mesh material shoes on average (Basu and Gupta 1072). This saved energy is extremely significant, especially considering that it really adds up overtime across the manufacturing of thousands of pairs of shoes. Compared to the average shoe, the Nike Space Hippie series is truly making an effort to practice environmentally conscious methods of energy use. For each pair of shoes that are manufactured, Nike has seen an 8% increase in energy reduction per pair of shoes (“Carbon and Energy”). In addition to the mesh upper portion of the shoe, the midsole and outsole also practice energy conservation in its manufacturing processes in an attempt to make an almost completely sustainable shoe. Crater rubber from factory floor scraps and fine grind rubber and rubber powder are used to make the midsole. It is combined with leftover Nike ZoomX foam and the scraps are combined using injection molding to make an outsole. Injection molding machines use between 0.9 and 1.6kWh/kg (Mobil, p. 4). Although this process does consume a considerable amount of energy, the product still saves energy because the materials being used don’t have to go through further processing methods. Sustainability has made a remarkable impact on the efforts taken to push the boundaries of efficiency. Factories work with it’s manufacture and distribution centers to ensure that the sustainability motif of the Nike Space Hippie series is carried out.

Nike’s distribution process aims to optimize sustainability and abide by energy conservation guidelines. As a matter of fact, the company is currently experimenting with environmentally conscious distribution methods. Specifically, the Nike Distribution centers where the Nike Space Hippie series shoes are made make efforts to conserve energy. Nike’s two main distribution factories in North America and China are LEED certified (“Carbon and Energy”). These two factories are the primary distribution centers for the Space Hippie shoes. This essentially means that the shoes are developed in a facility that has been certifiably using green building design and construction, manufacturing, and distribution in regards to energy. In efforts to experiment with greener practices, Nike has been consistently trying to shift the kind of energy that it uses to more renewable sources as a whole. 100% of Nike’s North American offices and retail stores are powered, in some way, by renewable energy  (“Carbon and Energy”). The Space Hippie series has been included in this distribution process as they are partially distributed through Nike’s North American centers. Specifics on the distribution of the Space Hippie series is somewhat unclear, but a broad sense of product handling provides a rough estimate on its energy usage. Although many processes conducted by Nike are not involved in Nike’s energy shift process, the company is looking towards sustainability for the future, which is more than a lot of major shoe corporations can say. Nike also uses ocean shipping for most of its shoes in order to save on energy and emissions that would be going to air shipment (“Carbon and Energy”). Efficiency has been a key motivator in the production of the Nike Space Hippie series as well as in Nike’s initiative to be more environmentally friendly. While Nike has made efforts to conserve energy in it’s distribution and manufacturing, the Nike Space Hippie series has also allowed for energy to be conserved in terms of waste management.

The Nike Space Hippie series saves energy because it essentially creates very minimal waste. Nike uses scraps as it’s raw material and the scraps of the scraps that are used to make the shoe are repurposed to make more shoes. As a result, the shoes establish a healthy cycle of material sustainability. The Nike Space Hippie shoes use recycled materials that require the least amount of energy to process as well. Compared to materials like leather, pure plastic, etc., the knit blend that the Space hippie series uses, consumes the least amount of energy/ CO2-eq total  (Derrig et al. 3-4). This is because in addition to using recycled raw material that doesn’t require much additional processing, the knitting machine doesn’t require much energy to use. This is true comparatively to other shoe knitting processes especially. Recycled footwear waste is a component of the Nike Space Hippie series. Although the material is recycled, There are quite a few processes that require significant energy usage to prepare the material for new usage. A single small scale system is estimated to go through several stages of shredding, separating, and conveying the material. One report found that a total of 58 kw/h were required to process about 0.5 tonnes/h worth of recycled material (Lee, James, and Rahimifard). While this is a significant amount of energy usage, the energy required to extract and refine raw materials for production would only add to the energy that would be required. Furthermore, the average cumulative energy demand for a pair of running shoes at the waste disposal stage of its life is around 0.09 MJ (0.25 kWh) (Cheah et al. 24). Since the Nike Space Hippie series uses at least some of what would normally be disposed of, the shoe acts as a sort of sink for waste that comes in the form of used running shoe material. The extent of recyclable material management does not stop with textiles and old shoes. Nike Space Hippie series has implemented the “Grind program” in its shoe production. Part of the materials that make up the shoe’s midsole and outsole are composed of plastic bottles. The Grind program has saved about 7.5 billion plastic bottles from becoming waste (Snowden ). Of course, the program doesn’t just encompass shoes. However shoes, the Nike Space Hippie being the pioneer, have helped repurpose otherwise disposed of plastic bottles. From manufacturing and handling, Nike’s product attempts to be sustainable. From start to finish, the design of the Space Hippie series can be described as “circular” (Danigelis). The development of this shoe required a new mode of thinking within the shoe industry. As previously analyzed through its efforts in limiting energy consumption, the shoe’s creation has demonstrated thinking that considers how to best use and reuse material to limit its footprint.

The Nike Space hippie series has paved the way for sustainability in the shoe industry. By experimenting and persistently iterating their design process, Nike has created a model in the shoe industry for others to follow. In the few years that the Nike space hippie shoe has been released, other major companies have adopted practices used in the Space Hippie production process in order to monitor their own energy consumption, waste management, and emissions. For example, the 4D knitting machine used to create the upper mesh of the Nike shoe can be seen being used in several other major conglomerates today. 4D knitting and CNC knitting machines have been adopted by adidas, H&M, etc. The idea of a predominantly recycled material and sustainable shoe has been created and adapted many times. With the many considerations taken to enhance its design process, the Nike Space Hippie series has undoubtedly changed the way in which a product should impact the consumer and their surrounding context. Innovative thinking has led to Nike’s creation of a shoe that conserves energy, materials, and waste more so than the average shoe.  

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