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Inside Outdoor | SUMMER 2020 25 E ach year, 300 mil- lion pairs of shoes are thrown out in the United States alone. Rackle is addressing this problem by building a shoe that is designed to biodegrade faster than any other contempo- rary shoe on the market. “We set out to build the most planet-friendly footwear brand possible,” said creation director and Rackle founder Joe Napurano. According to Napurano, every millimeter of the new Rackle shoes has been engineered to deliver not only lightweight and comfort but also a high degree of sustainability – from the up- per materials to the kind of adhesives used, which is typically the most toxic part of the footwear manufacturing pro- cess. For starters, the Rackle design uses a custom hemp textile developed by the Rackle team in partnership with a premier hemp supplier. The lining and lacing of the upper are cotton and recycled PET. One of the biggest challenges Rackle faced, however, was how to solve the eco-unfriendly process typical to making foam outsoles. Rackle rethought the process and, by working with a group spe- cializing in eco-friendly solutions, ended up with a foam material called EcoPure that is designed to start the material biodegrada- tion process only after reacting with microbes found in landfills. The technology comes from medical industry science that creates dissolving sutures. The result – shoe bottoms that biode- grade 30 to 50 times faster than untreated bottom materials, said the company. The entire bottom is formed to- gether all at once in production to avoid adhesives, said Napurano, re- sulting in a lightweight shoe with no loss in comfort or wear and up to 80 percent less adhesive compared to other brands’ shoes. Start 'em Up These Shoes Are Meant to Fall Apart