At a time when the world is going crazy about climate change and environmental issues are topping the headlines, Adidas has come up with an innovative way of contributing its bit towards the greater good. The company has unveiled bio-degradable shoe that can dissolve in water!
Shocked?
Adidas’ Futurecraft Biofabric was unveiled at a biofabric conference in New York last week. The shoe is made from synthetic silk called Biosteel, which is 100% bio-degradable and 15% lighter in weight. The shoe can dissolve in water. But there’s a catch. It won’t dissolve if you simply place it in water, so you don’t have to worry about the rain transforming your ‘cinderella-ish sneakers’ into trash. To dissolve the shoe you need to add an enzyme called proteinase (which they make) to water and place your shoe in it. The entire process takes about 36 hours and there you go from shoe to no-shoe!
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To achieve this feat, Adidas has partnered with the German biotech company, AMSilk, that specialises in making synthetic silk biopolymers.
“The sports shoes which have been developed together with Adidas are the first products worldwide with a high-performance material made of nature-identical silk biopolymers. With this development we are setting new standards regarding the functionality of renewable textiles,” CEO of AMSilk, Jens Klein said in a statement.
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And for those who were worried about the design, the good news is that unlike Adidas’ Parley shoe, that is made by recycling ocean plastic, Futurecraft Biofabric looks a lot like a conventional athletic shoe. Although the shoe is still a prototype, the word is that the company is hoping to commercialise the product by next year.
