Los Angeles, CA — [April 28th, 2026] — The Footwear Collective (TFC) announces the next step of the Footwear Futures Project: 30,525 pounds of end-of-life footwear – collected last October across 50 Goodwill Southern California locations in Los Angeles – has completed sortation and analysis with Homeboy Threads, and is now in the hands of three material processing partners evaluating and scaling different approaches for circular recovery. The data and insights gathered at every stage are helping TFC and its member brands understand what it will take to build a scalable, shared infrastructure for end-of-life footwear.
A Milestone Collection
Last October, consumers across Los Angeles brought used shoes — any brand, any condition —to 50 participating Goodwill Southern California locations. Footwear in good, wearable condition was offered for sale through Goodwill SoCal’s existing resale stores and outlets. Shoes that were not sold were directed to sortation partner Homeboy Threads. This marks the first multi-brand-led take-back initiative in the US industry to collectively test pathways for recycling end-of-life footwear.
Circular innovators, social enterprises, and material processors have long been part of the industry, and The Footwear Collective is building on that strong foundation by bringing their capabilities together into a unified, coordinated initiative — advancing shared infrastructure, a common data framework, and a collaborative approach at a scale not previously realized by any single brand or organization. TFC’s member brands, including Altra, Brooks, Crocs, Inc., ECCO, New Balance, ON, Reformation, Steve Madden, Target, and Vans, are united by a shared commitment to reimagine the future of footwear and accelerate progress toward circularity.
Characterizing Collected Shoes: Sortation with Homeboy Threads
Over the months following the collection, Homeboy Threads – a Los Angeles-based social enterprise providing reuse and recycling services for apparel and footwear – sorted, studied, and prepared the collected shoes for processing. The sortation step generated critical insights into the materials used in end-of-life footwear, their condition upon arrival, common archetypes present in a community collection, and the logistical realities of operating a sortation process at this scale.
For TFC, circularity is about the economic model it creates, and job creation and workforce development are a core part of that. A truly circular economy could generate dignified work, training, and opportunity alongside recovered materials. Homeboy Threads embodies that vision and the Footwear Futures Project is proud to support that mission through this collaboration.
“We provide hope, training and support to help people transform their lives and become contributing members of our community,” said Chris Zwicke, CEO of Homeboy Threads. “In this project, our team is transforming work into opportunity, and waste into possibility. We’ve been proud to partner with TFC to explore new circular solutions for footwear.”
Three Material Processing Partners Mapping What´s Possible
Real solutions for recycling end-of-life footwear exist, and the work being done is advancing fast. Yet the industry has yet to develop a system that brings these approaches together at scale, making recovered materials accessible, affordable, and broadly available. The Footwear Collective intends to build a network of experts responsible for taking end-of-life products, processing their complexity, and recovering value from them, and this project is an initial step toward that future. We have been fortunate to receive support and advice from a wide range of circular innovators, and in the spirit of advancing through imperfect action, we are starting with three partners for this step, and welcome more in future phases.
The sorted footwear is being distributed to these three material processing partners, each bringing distinct approaches, geographies, and areas of expertise. FastFeetGrinded is among them, an industrial-scale circular technology company specialized in footwear, transforming pre- and post-consumer footwear into high-quality raw materials. With proven processing capabilities, deep expertise in footwear, and existing closed-loop applications already active in the international market, FastFeet Grinded is enabling scalable solutions for closing the loop within the industry. “At FastFeetGrinded, we see end-of-life footwear as a valuable resource stream. Our focus is on transforming that complexity into scalable, circular raw materials. Through the Footwear Futures Project, we are accelerating the connection between collection, sorting, and material recovery to help build the infrastructure this industry urgently needs,” said Danny Pormes, CEO & Founder of FastFeetGrinded.
Joining them is SuperCircle, a full-stack waste management platform turning end-of-life materials into a source of recovery — economically and materially. “The footwear industry has a recycling problem — and we’ve spent years working to solve it, building our own recyclable footwear brand as an R&D center to develop the collection, sortation, and processing infrastructure that scalable circularity requires. That hands-on experience gave us the conviction — and the blueprint — to launch SuperCircle. But scalable recycling demands collective action. Partnering with The Footwear Collective is the natural next step: engineering a solution built for the entire sector, not just one brand,” said Stuart Ahlum, Co-Founder & COO of SuperCircle.
The third partner, TerraCycle, is a global recycling platform specializing in hard-to-recycle pre- and post-consumer materials. “TerraCycle’s in-house scientists have developed a best-in-class solution for the recycling of shoes and their components, recovering over 97% of the material. We’ve applied this process across every category of footwear, and have also engineered closed-loop solutions, returning a shoe’s materials to new production,” said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. “At TerraCycle, our mission is Eliminating the Idea of Waste®, and the Footwear Futures Project brings together exactly the kind of industry-wide effort it takes to move to a circular economy.”
These innovators will work with existing solutions in the market for recovering end-of-life shoes, mapping open- and closed-loop pathways, understanding the outputs each process generates, and identifying opportunities to improve and scale what’s possible. Findings from this phase will inform the broader picture of what scalable footwear circularity requires, contributing to the case for shared infrastructure capable of keeping the estimated 23.9 billion pairs of shoes produced each year out of landfills.
Building the Case for Collective Action
Building the Case for Collective Action
“We are learning from each step of the process to develop the business case that shows collective action is the right way to keep shoes circulating,” said Dr. Yuly Fuentes-Medel, Founder and Executive Director of The Footwear Collective. “We are data-focused, because we know those insights are key to building the infrastructure we need, starting with California, and expanding across the U.S. and beyond”.
As The Footwear Collective has maintained since its founding, progress toward circularity requires every actor in the ecosystem. What makes the Footwear Futures Project a first of its kind is the scope of that collective approach, accepting post-consumer footwear of any brand and any condition, and following it through every step of the process, from collection to sortation to material recovery. By uniting consumers, nonprofits, brands, retailers, innovators, and industry under a shared goal, it is tackling the barriers that no single player can solve alone. Every phase is a learning opportunity, and every finding moves the industry one step closer to a future where every shoe keeps circulating.
TFC will continue to share updates on findings and next steps at footwearfuturesproject.org and on Instagram @the_footwearcollective.
About The Footwear Collective
The Footwear Collective is the first industry-specific initiative under EarthDNA, a nonprofit on a mission to empower individuals to take daily actions to heal spaceship Earth within a decade. As a membership organization with 11 leading footwear brands and retailers, including Altra, Brooks, Crocs, Inc., ECCO, New Balance, ON, Reformation, Steve Madden, Target, and Vans, we’re reimagining the entire lifecycle of footwear to create a more innovative, more responsible industry – one that drives innovation while reducing commercial and environmental waste. By uniting brands, suppliers, and innovators – often competitors – under a shared goal, we focus on scoping, developing, and scaling circular solutions that are good for business and the planet. Learn more at earthdna.org/home/the-footwear-collective.
About the Footwear Futures Project
The Footwear Futures Project is the first real-world initiative launched by The Footwear Collective to evaluate and scale circular solutions for the footwear industry. Through partnerships with Goodwill Southern California, Homeboy Threads, and material recovery partners FastFeet Grinded, SuperCircle, and TerraCycle, the project collects used footwear, keeps wearable pairs in circulation, and advances pathways for recycling and material recovery. By bringing together consumers, industry leaders, and circular innovators, the Footwear Futures Project is shaping the blueprint for a circular future in footwear. Learn more at footwearfuturesproject.org.
Contact Us
For questions or additional information, please contact:
Maria Braun, Communications Manager, The Footwear Collective
maria@footwearcollective.org
Morgan Ginn, Program Manager, The Footwear Collective
morgan@footwearcollective.org
