Nike is always at the forefront of sneaker design. Now, the company is leading footwear’s fight against climate change. The Nike ISPA Link & ISPA Link Axis can be taken apart and recycled once they are no longer in use. Nike’s goal is to work toward its sustainability goals for 2025, 2030, 2050, and beyond, which includes designing products with their end in mind. The ISPA Link & ISPA Link Axis are shoes that wearers can take apart for recycling. Creating a shoe that can be disassembled is trickier than it seems, as footwear manufacturers typically use bonding elements like glue to make shoes more durable. That glue makes them impossible to dismantle and energy-intensive to recycle. A shoe that can be taken apart has a smaller carbon footprint.
The ISPA Link & ISPA Link Axis feature three interlocking pieces that do not require glue to remain durable. The shoe has a futuristic look with a 100-percent recycled polyester Flyknit upper that fits snuggly over the outsole. The TPU cage is 20-percent recycled, and the 100-percent recycled TPU tooling is from leftover airbag material. The ISPA Link and Link Axis break the mold of footwear design and push Nike closer to the company’s sustainability goals. The Nike ISPA Link will arrive in June 2022, while the ISPA Link Axis will release in 2023.
For more on Nike’s sustainability efforts, check out the Nike Pegasus Turbo Next Nature.