Shoe Makers Need to Reduce Their Footprint

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not revealing any proprietary information on behalf of my employer with this post. (Besides, such information is beyond my pay grade anyway!)

Yesterday began one of the more arduous parts of my job as shoes supervisor at Kohl’s: clearance prep. You see, about once a month some older styles get marked down in order to make room for the new. The first step when it comes to preparation is to locate and group the selected clearance styles and then remove all tissue paper and other packaging in the box.

Shoe boxes may also contain Styrofoam, wooden dowels, and in the case of Skechers, a full-size plastic shaper that fills the inside of the shoe. As we filled up trash bag after trash bag, a co-worker commented, “This is such waste!” Customers watch in horror, wondering why you’re dumping all the stuffing out of a brand new pair of shoes.

The process has many more tedious steps, but the five or so trash bags we filled with box stuffings is the topic of this post. I’ve often wondered why manufacturers put so much packing material in new shoes. Why do the shoes themselves have to be stuffed, wrapped, stretched, etc?

I haven’t found a concrete answer yet, but athletic shoe maker Brooks may shed some light on the subject. Brooks has enacted a green initiative that uses eco-friendlier packaging materials including less stuffing. A “shoe stay”, to be exact, is what Brooks calls the wad of tissue found wedged inside most new pair of shoes. They also have eliminated this part, saying shoes still ship in great shape, which leads me to believe it serves some kind of (however necessary) protective purpose.

Silica packets (the things that say “Do Not Eat”) are also a bygone on pairs of Brooks. Their purpose is to absorb moisture, but Brooks' shipping trials deemed them unnecessary. You have no idea how many of those things inevitably litter the floor at Kohl’s. I wish all manufacturers would consider this step, even if it does mean bad things for Buffalo-based Multisorb Technologies.

Finally, when prepped shoes do go clearance, the boxes are most often tossed in the cardboard recycling dumpster. While recycling is good, those glossy boxes are loaded with dyes and inks, none of which is too good for the environment (or your hands, which it stains). Here Brooks switched to not only all recycled materials, but water-based inks as well.

Just about every major business today needs to incorporate green efforts in its overall marketing communications. Environmental stewardship is in vogue right now, and will only get hotter in the future. I wish Nike, Skechers, Reebok, and other big shoes manufacturers (or at least the ones I handle daily at work!) would take a page from the Brooks play book and reduce all their packaging material. Not only would it make my job a lot easier on clearance days, but it would give them something to tout in their green marketing materials.