Nike has teamed up with Steve Nash, guard for the Phoenix Suns, to make a new eco-friendly basketball shoe. The shoe is modeled off Nash’s current shoe, the Nike Zoom. It’s made from 100 percent recycled material—better described as waste, and rightfully named “Trash Talk.”
The shoe is made from factory scraps that would otherwise find their way to a landfill. The style is Frankenstein-esque, composed of both real and synthetic leather patches, factory scrap foam and environment-preferred rubber. The slurry of scraps are stitched together to form a “too good to be true” looking shoe.
The idea behind the shoe: Recycle. Nike hopes the shoe will offer a here-and-now solution to footwear waste that occurs during manufacturing.
Nike became the poster child for sweatshop labor in the 1990s, earning the disdain of environmentalists and human rights groups and sparking Nike boycotts. The company has been trying to recover its reputation ever since by improving working conditions and creating more “consumer transparency” about its factories. Some think the recycled shoe is a step in the right direction, while critics think it’s an example of “greenwashing.”