Study - Running Shoes - Bad for the Environment

Study: Running shoes leave large carbon footprint
Cheryl Santa Maria
Staff Writer


Running - often lauded as an environmentally-friendly pastime - may not be as green as previously thought. A typical pair of running shoes is comprised of 360 parts, and a new study led by MIT researchers demonstrates how energy-intensive the assembly process is.


The majority of the roughly 25 billion pairs of running shoes sold globally each year are manufactured in China, which relies heavily on coal electricity. Sewing, cutting, molding and heating the shoes requires excessive use of carbon-intensive energy.


All in, a single pair of shoes generates about 30 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions which is equivalent, according to researchers, to keeping a 100-watt light bulb on for one week straight.


It's hoped that the findings will prompt shoe manufacturers to reduce the carbon footprint of their products.


The findings have been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

 

Considering runners are rubber, I could have guessed it wouldn't be too safe to make but that's just like everything now. I've heard TV production is one of the worst things for air pollution but at the start of this thread I thought it was going to go on like when you physically leave a footprint, that footprint is polluted. Lol.

 

Angel they arn't rubber they're urethane and not just 'running shoes', virtually all shoes.
Anything manufactured in those kind of quantities is going to leave a substantial environmental footprint. Most shoes these days are made nearly entirely of plastic and plastic glue, ultimately derived from oil products.

 

Well, might as well run barefoot...and leave no carbon fp

 

carbon footprint

no really, it is...