Time after time, athletes from around the world step up to the starting line, to home plate, to the foul line, expecting their footwear to help them perform and carry their team to victory. Having the right type of footwear is critical when it comes to games where light-weight shoes make a world of a difference.
Sustainable and high-tech, lightweight yet extremely durable, engineered with performance in mind at a cost that won’t break the bank. Nike is constantly refining their production process to manufacture shoes with all of these game-changing solutions in mind.
With the success of their FlyKnit technology, Nike was able to create a new manufacturing method for their shoes using the least amount of material possible, while still maintaining a superior-performing product.
FlyKnit technology utilizes yarn and fabric variations where they are most necessary, creating a light-weight, form-fitting shoe that performs better than ever before. This revolutionary design helped pave way for Flyleather, a new type of material manufactured by Nike made using at least 50% recycled material.
In fact, Flyleather is the lowest carbon-footprint leather ever made. In a push to reduce their waste, Nike gathers their discarded leather scraps and turns them into fibers. Those leather fibers are then combined with synthetic fibers and fabric using a hydro-pressure process which generates forces so strong that it fuses everything into one material.
You may be wondering, how is Flyleather so sustainable? Well, to simply put it, the Flyleather manufacturing process uses 90-percent less water and has an 80-percent lower carbon footprint than traditional leather manufacturing. Not to mention, because the leather is made from recycled materials, it improves the efficiency of the entire process, creating a chain of events that helps generate less waste.
Turning to sustainability, Nike was able to create a manufacturing process that led way to a new means of producing high-quality products with the environment in mind.