Our recycling pilot program: October 18-24, 2021.

We started out with the radical idea that plastic bottles could become shoes—and since then, we’ve continued to innovate. We built our own factory, where we’ve repurposed millions of plastic water bottles and thousands of pounds of ocean-bound marine plastic into shoes, bags and accessories. 

From October 18 to October 24, 2021, we ran a recycling pilot program where we took back old Rothy’s for recycling in our retail stores. This brought us one step closer to reaching our goal of circular production by 2023.

We piloted recycling your Rothy's.

We took the shoes you brought in and tested ways that we can dismantle and recycle each component. For this initial phase, we worked with a thread supplier to recycle our uppers made from recycled water bottles into twice-recycled thread. This is just the beginning—we started small and are excited to continue developing this program with what we’ve learned.

How it worked:

Anyone looking to part with a pair of Rothy’s could have participated in our recycling pilot program and helped us reach our goal of recycling 20,000 pairs of shoes by the end of 2021.

This was only the first step in our recycling program journey and we’re excited to keep you updated on our progress. Want to keep learning about sustainability at Rothy’s? Dive deeper here.