Your shoes are sturdy and simply designed. If they break, they’re easy to repair, and it always makes more sense to repair them than to buy a new pair. But even shoes made by LANGBRETT will eventually need to be recycled.

Once the shoes have been returned to one of our shops, they are collected centrally and then transported to Portugal as palletised freight in one of our lorries, which are often underutilised.

There, a special mechanical process is used to separate the upper from the sole, and both materials are prepared for recycling. Depending on our production requirements, they are then stored near our office and production facility – 20 km from Porto.

From here on, it’s straightforward: as is standard practice in textile recycling, the textiles are shredded using specialised machinery to recycle the fibres into new yarn; any metal and leather scraps are removed and collected beforehand.

The leather offcuts are used to make heel and toe caps, whilst the new yarn is used to produce a woven upper once again. The rubber is recycled directly on site during the sole production process. With the help of a machine known as a calender, the rubber is recycled back into sole material that is perfectly suitable for use.

Another important point: we do not use any chemical treatments whatsoever in our recycling processes – as a matter of principle and without exception. This means your shoes make their way back to the shop and the cycle starts all over again.