How Crocs is reducing the carbon footprint of its clogs

Crocs is progressing at a gradual tempo to extend the bio-based supplies within the 150 million pairs of footwear it sells annually. The technique underpins the corporate’s net-zero goal for 2040.

1 / 4 of the fabric in Crocs footwear now options “bio-circular” supplies, up from 17.3 p.c in 2023, the corporate shared Sept. 5. “Bio-circular” supplies repurpose cooking oils and paper trade course of waste. The clog maker has come midway towards its objective, set in 2021, to make use of 50 p.c bio-circular content material by 2030.

Crocs’ shuffle away from fully fossil-based supplies helped to cut back its absolute emissions by 3 p.c in 2023. The carbon footprint of every pair of its clogs has dropped by 6.1 p.c over 2021, based on the Broomfield, Colorado-based model.

“After we look throughout our emissions, 97 p.c of our emissions are in our provide chain, which suggests oblique management,” Deanna Bratter, Crocs’ vice chairman and international head of sustainability, advised Trellis. “We actually should accomplice with materials suppliers, producers, transportation distribution suppliers to truly affect and drive the change.”

What’s altering inside Crocs

Crocs’ proprietary Croslite compound blends ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), deriving from crude oil, with different components. Croslite contains 80 p.c of the supplies the 22-year-old firm buys.

“It offers us a transparent place the place we all know we are able to make a scalable affect if we buy the precise means,” Bratter stated. “We recognized the precise means when it comes to bio-circular supplies, which not solely assist scale back our dependence on fossil primarily based inputs, but in addition we’ve been capable of, by way of [lifecycle analysis] work, scale back our carbon emissions.”

Crocs makes use of the time period “bio-circular” to explain bio-based materials that’s “round” as a result of it makes use of feedstocks from waste or waste byproducts. The premise for the components consists of industrial-scale spent cooking oils from the meals trade and tall oil, a byproduct of paper milling and recycling, Bratter stated.

Though the non-fossil supplies value extra money, Crocs is just not elevating costs, she added. Crocs’ “Traditional Clogs” type retails for round $40.

Crocs deserves credit score for its transparency round even modest emissions reductions associated to sourcing, based on Julia Freer Goldstein, content material strategist at JLFG Communications and co-author of the guide “Supplies and Circularity.”

Working with suppliers

Crocs’ 2023 sustainability report counts 314 suppliers for its Crocs and Hey Dude manufacturers. Many Crocs suppliers are huge fossil chemical producers. Others, “within the innovation area,” are much less broadly identified, Bratter stated.

When launching its bio-circular effort a number of years in the past, Crocs partnered intently with Dow on its Equilibrium expertise, a technical course of that ends in the bio-circular materials. 

“Since then, we’ve added a number of suppliers in order that we are able to create some differentiation within the provide chain, which additionally helps us create competitiveness for pricing and managing sourcing,” Bratter stated.

Footwear steps ahead

Crocs is an early mover amongst shoe corporations exploring alternate options to fossil supplies to cut back their carbon footprints. “Wanting on the vogue and footwear trade, sustainability has an extended approach to go, and there’s an enormous quantity of significance in actually considerate steps ahead,” Bratter stated. “I hate to be cliche with, ‘Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress,’ however it’s actually true, and so we see this as such an necessary step in understanding our materials.”

The corporate grew to become a founding member of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Footwear Collective in 2023. It collaborates with New Steadiness, Brooks, Goal and others on circularity efforts. 

As a result of EVA, utilized in Crocs, is so frequent within the soles of sneakers and lots of different footwear, Bratter stated she hopes the corporate’s actions with biomaterials may unfold throughout the footwear trade.

Crocs belongs to a minority of footwear corporations rolling out footwear with bio-based supplies. In response to the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA):

• Solely 34 p.c of shoe corporations used extra bio-based supplies in 2023 than in 2022. That fell from 41 p.c in 2022.
• Greater than half of shoe corporations stated in 2023 they might use extra bio-based supplies in upcoming merchandise, up from 44 p.c in 2022.
• Crocs started incorporating recycled supplies in 2021. In 2020, 61 p.c of shoe corporations did so.

Among the many options popping out of shoe manufacturers’ skunkworks: Asics is promoting recyclable Mirai sneakers; On is providing “round” trainers with bio-based components and Puma is experimenting with biodegradable kicks.

Controversial supplies accounting

Crocs makes use of a technique known as mass stability, licensed by third-party ISCC Plus, which follows the full materials inputs and outputs of byzantine provide chains. Meals and chemical compounds companies have used mass stability for years.

“I feel the story with Crocs is similar to Lego: using these mass-balanced supplies does assist corporations scale up their use of bio-based feedstocks, and that’s a great factor,” stated Anthony Schiavo, principal analyst at Lux Analysis. “Nevertheless, there’s a threat that customers will really feel misled if there’s a significant hole between the marketed bio-based content material, primarily based on mass balancing, and what’s bodily current.”

Issues get fuzzy as a result of corporations can’t hint the paths of particular person molecules by way of suppliers’ chemical processes and into particular person merchandise. Subsequently, mass stability may lead to a model calling a product 20 p.c biobased, even when the product encompasses a fraction of bio-based materials.

“This creates threat of client backlash, and will encourage the sentiment that these client [sustainability] efforts are all greenwashing, which is counterproductive,” Schiavo stated.

With that in thoughts, Crocs doesn’t say particular person footwear comprise a selected degree of bio-circular content material, Bratter stated. As a substitute, the corporate describes the full share of bio-circular components utilized in Croslight in a given yr. “It could fluctuate shoe to shoe, however on an entire, we’re being very clear with that declare,”she added.

Maintaining supplies circulating

Along with adopting fossil-free supplies, Crocs has a number of efforts to maintain its merchandise and supplies in use:

• Crocs expanded its takeback program in Might from 45 to 150 U.S. shops, plus a mail-in possibility.
• The corporate in 2023 donated 236,000 pairs of wearable footwear from takeback to Soles4Souls, a nonprofit that distributes them to individuals in want.
• Crocs is just not but sharing how supplies inside unusable footwear from that takeback program may be recycled. “Something is on the desk,” Bratter stated.
• Seven p.c of every pair of Crocs is constructed from post-industrial, recycled content material, together with waste from the injection molding course of in its vegetation.
• Crocs recycles 45 p.c of scrap Croslite materials from manufacturing to make new footwear.
• As a substitute of cardboard packing containers, Crocs is utilizing plastic baggage manufactured from one hundred pc post-industrial recycled content material, which supply an 85 p.c decrease carbon footprint, based on the corporate.

“When it comes to having the ability to combine round supplies, and in addition at finish of life, having the ability to course of and repurpose, we completely have a bonus versus others which can be extra advanced,” Bratter stated. Crocs’ plastic footwear is comparatively easy, and subsequently extra readily recyclable than, say, sneakers, with their fasteners and flashy panels. 

Nevertheless, the corporate must be cautious to not oversell circularity, Freer Goldstein stated. “A part of the issue with circularity and round financial system, if it simply goes across the circle as soon as, that’s not it,” she added.

“You suppose like, ‘Oh nice, that is this round; that is going to go round or down, after which we don’t want any extra enter.’ No, you retain needing extra enter for each pair of footwear. You’re nonetheless making plastic footwear, and also you’re nonetheless needing inputs. It’s simply the supply of the inputs has modified.”