Gallery: You Can Compost Adidas's Newest Shoe In Your Sink
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Adidas’s newest shoe is the Futurecraft Biofabric. Its upper is made from biofabricated spider silk.
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The faux spider silk comes from AMSilk, a German biotech company. Like real spider silk, it boasts more tensile strength than traditional polymers. It also requires no fossil fuels to produce.
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the Futurecraft Biofabric looks a lot like a modern athletic shoe—albeit one Midas lightly touched. The open-knit upper has a golden sheen, and it connects to Adidas’s trademark Boost sole.
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Adidas says the shoe is 15 percent lighter than one made from traditional polymers
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AMSilk creates that Biosteel textile by injecting genetically modified silk proteins into bacteria, and then fermenting it. That process creates a powder substrate, which AMSilk spins into yarn. That becomes Biosteel.
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AMSilk also created an enzyme solution that would let users dissolve their own shoes at home, in the sink. It comes in a little packet, mixes with water, and needs only a few hours.
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This is Adidas's next step towards sustainability—a shoe that can dissolve and rinse (safely) right down the sink.
