Allbirds Unveils Design of World’s First Net Zero Carbon Shoe – Immediately Calls on Footwear Industry to Copy It

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark, June 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Allbirds revealed its highly anticipated M0.0NSHOT, the world’s first net zero carbon shoe — and is already urging the rest of the fashion industry to follow suit by giving away its entire toolkit.

The high-top shoe boasts a landmark carbon footprint of net 0.0 kg CO2e. Carbon negative, regenerative wool wraps the entirety of the M0.0NSHOT for a striking, uniform look.

Allbirds’s co-founder Tim Brown took to the stage at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen to unveil the shoe and call on industry competitors in the audience to create their own versions. To help them do so, Allbirds is open-sourcing the M0.0NSHOT methodology via its ‘Recipe B0.0K’: a toolkit detailing each step of the M0.0NSHOT’s process, including materials, manufacturing, transportation, end-of-life, and carbon footprint calculation.

The toolkit was distributed to the thousands of Global Fashion Summit attendees and is now available digitally on the Allbirds website for anyone to download – and, hopefully, implement.

“This is one small step for Allbirds – but it could be one giant leap for the footwear industry, if others join us. Unlike the space ‘race’, this is a relay – we’re all on the same side,” said Tim Brown. “M0.0NSHOT is Allbirds’s greatest achievement, but it’s meaningless without others taking action: which is why we felt compelled to open-source our learnings, so others can pick up the baton and take us forward.”

SUPER NATURAL MATERIALS

Launching commercially in Spring 2024, M0.0NSHOT is the culmination of years of work and Allbirds’s focus on systematically reducing carbon in its business and products since its founding. In 2018, it created SweetFoam® — a midsole foam made with the carbon negative, sugarcane-derived green EVA — which informed the new foam used in M0.0NSHOT.

Then, in 2020, Allbirds became the first fashion brand to label products with carbon footprints. A year later, the brand announced a partnership with adidas to collaborate on what was, at that point, the lowest carbon shoe in the world: the Adizero x Allbirds.

After that project, shooting for a net zero carbon shoe became the natural next step. The Allbirds Futures Team — a cross-functional innovation team — took on that challenge in 2022, harnessing all of the brand’s previous learnings to design M0.0NSHOT.

This achievement is made possible by:

  • An upper made with carbon negative regenerative wool sourced from Lake Hawea Station. The minimalist design approach heroes this super natural material, a full-circle moment for the company founded with a wool shoe.
  • A midsole featuring a specially crafted version of Allbirds’s SuperLight Foam, a carbon negative bio-based midsole foam made with sugarcane and formed via supercritical foaming.
  • Molded components including a logo made with methane-capture bioplastic via partnership with Mango Materials.
  • Sugarcane-based polyethylene packaging — a carbon negative material — reducing weight and space required for transportation.

“We didn’t just make the world’s first net zero carbon shoe. We also made the second, third, fourth net zero carbon shoe, and so on, as we explored different prototypes to create an appropriate visual identity for this milestone,” said Jamie McLellan, design lead on the project. “As we thought about this ‘shoe of the future’, we were clear that M0.0NSHOT couldn’t look like something from the past. We’ve not just reimagined the science of a sustainable shoe, we’ve reimagined the design, too.”

To learn more about M0.0NSHOT and see the toolkit, visit: www.allbirds.com/moonshot

Contact
Allbirds PR
press@allbirds.com

About Allbirds, Inc.: Dreamed up in New Zealand, Allbirds launched in San Francisco in 2016 with the ethos of using natural materials to create the world’s most comfortable shoes. With carbon reduction as its north star, Allbirds is paving the way for a more sustainable approach to business through product innovation, industry collaboration (like open sourcing its footprint calculator) and being the first footwear brand to carbon label all of its products. www.allbirds.com

About M0.0NSHOT’s product carbon footprint calculation:
Here’s how we account for net zero:

  • First, we started by working with The New Zealand Merino Company’s regenerative wool program, ZQRX, to source M0.0NSHOT’s wool from Lake Hawea Station.
  • Second, we calculated the specific farm-level carbon footprint of Lake Hawea Station. The organizational carbon footprint that forms the starting point for the allocation was developed independently of this project and verified by Toitū Envirocare, a New Zealand-based B Corp and carbon certification business.
  • Then, we collaborated with The New Zealand Merino Company to translate this farm footprint into a product-level wool material carbon intensity for M0.0NSHOT.
  • This new wool carbon intensity is used to calculate the product’s carbon footprint using the Allbirds Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Tool, with modifications. The initial Allbirds LCA Tool was third-party verified against the requirements of ISO 14067, which specifies principles, requirements and guidelines for calculating the carbon footprint of a product.
  • The carbon footprint of M0.0NSHOT accounts for on-farm carbon sequestration, in addition to emissions, which is a deviation from standard industry practice. As a result, the calculated carbon footprint for M0.0NSHOT, unlike Allbirds’ standard products, is not fully aligned to ISO 14067.
  • However, Allbirds believes this wool carbon intensity value captures a more comprehensive model of the total emissions fluxes happening on-farm.