Development of an Economically Sustainable Recycling Process for the Footwear Sector
The worldwide consumption of footwear is estimated to be in excess of 20 billion pairs of shoes per year. At present less than 5％ of these are recycled or reused，with most being disposed of in landfill sites around the world.In fact，the majority of current footwear recycling schemes are led by charitable organisations，for the purpose of reusing the shoes in developing countries.However，not all of the collected shoes are deemed suitable for reuse，with a sizeable amount of these old shoes more suited for material recycling due to their poor conditions.Material recycling of footwear products is however a challenging problem with most modern shoes containing a complex mixture of leather，rubber，textile，polymers and metallic materials.Furthermore due to the relatively low value of recoverable materials，the cost of the shoe recycling processes has to be kept to a minimum.This paper discusses a four step methodology that has been developed to create a‘market driven’material recycling approach for footwear products.A key point outlined in this paper is that for end-of-life products with relativity low hidden value such as footwear products，currently it is not economically feasible to obtain recycled materials that can compete with virgin materials in the market place.Therefore，a more realistic level of material recycling is proposed for footwear sector，using commercially available automated recycling technologies.
End-of-Life Management Footwear Recycling
Mike Lee Shahin Rahimifard
Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing and Reuse/Recycling Technologies (SMART) Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing,Loughborough University,UK
国际会议
17th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering(国际生产工程科学院(ICRP)第17届生命周期工程会议 LCE 2010)
合肥
英文
334-339
2010-05-19（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）