Decathlon has announced that after years of development, its brand Quechua has successfully created a hiking shoe that is made from just one material, instead of six.
Making the announcement on LinkedIn, company CEO Barbara Martin Coppola said this makes the shoe far easier to recycle, meaning it can then be used to create other sporting products like swimming fins, giving them a new lease of life.
The new shoe, called the NH ONE, is a new iteration of the company’s worldwide best seller, the NH100 hiking shoe.
“The NH ONE is the first of its kind. Through the product process, we have already been able to reduce its CO2 output by 16% compared with its predecessor…but that’s just the beginning.
“Decathlon will arrange a free-of-charge collection of the shoes once you feel you’ve maxed out your adventures in them, and they will then be crushed down into tiny pieces to be used in new products,” Martin Coppola said.
She noted that the shoes will be rolling out a test in France with 3,000 pairs.
The company pointed out that given that 3 million pairs of NH100 shoes were sold in 2023, the potential positive impact this could have on the planet is immense.
