YOUR SHOES ARE MADE OF WHAT?

What if I told you my new, shiny, leather-looking shoes are made of mangoes?

Yeah, mangos. As in the fruit. Crazy, right? 

Apparently 2 guys in The Netherlands had an idea of turning surplus fruit into vegan leather. They started out by trying different types of fruit, such as watermelon, which didn't work out so well; in order for this process to work, you need a material with lots of fiber. Turns out, watermelon is mostly just water. After some trial and error, they found an importer with piles of quality-checked, cut-in-half, obviously unsellable mangoes just sitting around. And the rest is history.

Have a look at this video below and see for yourself. I find this so interesting!

 

 

Thanks to modern technology, we are able to process loads of different, perhaps unexpected materials, and do amazing things with what we would have considered as waste before. This is called secondary production. There are so many great examples: turning mangoes into fake leather, plastic waste into swimsuits, pieces of trash into greeting cards... I swear the world becomes a slightly better place every time someone comes up with a new, innovative way to reuse and repurpose materials.

The beauty of secondary production is not having to source new raw materials. This cuts down waste by default, as the waste that will inevitably form from the secondary production is waste that has already been in circulation. Ta da! 

This is what circular economy tries to promote all the way through. Remember linear economy; take, make, use, dispose? Yeah, we don't want that. We want make/remake, use/reuse. We want this to go on as long as possible, the same materials to flow through stages of remaking & reusing.

In order for this model to work we need a closed loop. Practically this consists of 3 main business processes: 

        1. Acquisition (collect the right volumes of products or materials of the right quality for a reasonable price)

  2. Reprocessing (refurbish, remanufacture or recycle used products or materials, for a reasonable price) 

  3. Remarketing (identify markets that want to buy the reprocessed products or materials)

If even one of the processes isn't in place, there is no closed loop. All 3 areas must be functioning. This is where the difficulty lies for many industries & companies. In order to make this easier, we need to think in systems. Share knowledge when and where we can; share the load, take responsibility, work towards a shared goal. When you get it right, the sourcing value (direct cost reduction by having closed loop practices) can be immense.

I hope you learned something new today, and were just as amazed as I was about Fruitleather. What an amazing company!

 

Anna x