{"id":16722,"date":"2021-05-24T09:56:44","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/?p=16722"},"modified":"2021-05-24T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T15:18:50","slug":"incentivizing-recycled-materials-puts-shoe-startup-step-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/real-estate-marketing\/incentivizing-recycled-materials-puts-shoe-startup-step-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Incentivizing recycled materials puts this shoe startup a step ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

The startup shoe retailer, Thousand Fell<\/a>, has a line of classic white lace-up and slip-on shoes. Based in New York City, the company was launched by Founders Chloe Songer and Stuart Ahlum last year. But, the brand isn’t just a regular sneaker company. It\u2019s a full-circle economy shoe company that\u2019s creating zero-waste footwear.<\/p>\n

According to the company\u2019s website, about 2.4 billion pairs of shoes are sold in the U.S. every year. As many as 97 percent of all shoes will end up in a landfill each year. It takes leather soles about 40 years to decompose in the landfill, and rubber soles take twice as long to decompose. Thousand Fell recognizes that waste is a huge environmental issue and wants to be a part of the solution with its biodegradable footwear line.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s shoes are all made with materials<\/a> that can either be \u201cbiodegraded, recycled to make new shoes, or upcycled into materials for new projects.\u201d The company uses items like recycled rubbers and bottles to make soles, leather-like uppers, and next generation laces. Other ingredients such as aloe vera, coconut husks, and sugar cane are also used to offer a soft-touch feel, stability, support, and comfort.<\/p>\n

Thousand Fell\u2019s mission<\/a> is to be sustainable and to never send another sneaker to the landfill. And to get there, it’s incentivizing its customers to recycle their purchased products. When you\u2019ve worn out your shoes, or simply don\u2019t want them anymore, you can return your shoes to Thousand Fell at no cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThousand Fell owns the material feeds and covers the cost of recycling, as well as the resale or reintegration of recycled material back into new shoes and the issuance of the $20 recycling cash that is sent back to the consumer once they recycle,\u201d wrote Ahlum in an email to TechCrunch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In partnership with TerraCycle, customers can easily recycle their purchased products through the company\u2019s \u201cThousand Fell Recycling Program<\/a>\u201d. All you have to do is place your shoes in any box you have. You create an account<\/a>, request a prepaid UPS shipping label, print it, and affix it to the box. Then, you can mail them via UPS. Once your shoes are scanned for return, you\u2019ll receive $20 that can be applied to your next Thousand Fell order.<\/p>\n

When the company receives the shoes, they are catalogued, sorted, and broken down to be used to make raw recycled materials<\/p>\n

\u201cWe create sneakers with a life cycle you can follow\u2014and feel good about,\u201d the company\u2019s website states. By taking a step forward to create a zero-waste product that can be used and reused to create a new one, Thousand Fell is going full-circle<\/a> and doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(MARKETING) Thousand Fell integrates sustainability into their brand structure by paying customers back for their recycled shoewear, which they then use to make more shoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337827,"featured_media":16723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[194,1234,566,2053],"class_list":["post-16722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-marketing","tag-marketing","tag-real-estate-news","tag-startup","tag-sustainable"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/ThousandFellShoes.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337827"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16726,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722\/revisions\/16726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}