Get smart curated videos delivered to your inbox.   SUBSCRIBE
The Kid Should See This

From Trash to Space Hippie: Nike shoes made from waste

Watch more with these video collections:

Inspired by the limited resources required for human life on Mars, as well as the plastic waste challenges facing planet Earth, Nike has developed Space Hippie, a shoe line made from waste materials. The design and manufacturing process was developed as one of their zero waste and zero carbon sustainability goals. The commercial above, Space Hippie: These Nike Sneakers are Trash, describes the project.

We kept going back to this phrase called in situ utilization. There’s this idea in space exploration that if you’re going to fly to the moon, fly to Mars and stay there and do something, you have to create things with what you find there. You can say there’s no resupply mission coming to Mars. There’s no resupply mission coming to Earth, either.

The design looks like it’s made from beach plastic “mixed in blue putty,” with marathon-winning ZoomX foam waste, grainy rubber, and a recycled yarn upper that “looks like dryer lint.”

space hippie shoe line
In the video below, From Trash to Space Hippie | Behind the Design, Nike describes how they recycled materials to create each part of their lowest carbon footprint shoe yet. From their site:

Space Hippie’s Flyknit yarn is made from 85-90% recycled content, including plastic bottles, t-shirts and post-industrial scraps. Crater Foam tooling uses about 12% Nike Grind rubber combined with foam materials for a more sustainable, lightweight and responsive feel during city exploration.

making a space hippie shoe

What if Nike and other shoe companies did this with all of their shoes, not just one line? Could used sneakers be transformed into new ones instead of going into the trash? Related watching: What is the Circular Economy?

Watch these shoe videos next:
Are your sneakers are part of the plastic problem?
• How traditional Chinese cloth shoes are made
• How a failed invention lead to a potentially life-saving new idea

This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity. TKSST features smarter, more meaningful content than what's usually served up by YouTube's algorithms, and amplifies the creators who make that content.

Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.

🌈 Watch these videos next...

Washed Ashore, giant animal sculptures made of found beach plastic

Rion Nakaya

Turning plastic bottles into football jerseys

Rion Nakaya

Turn human waste into drinking water – Janicki Omniprocessor

Rion Nakaya

Treasures in the Trash

Rion Nakaya

Thumb-dented aluminum can sculptures

Rion Nakaya

The Weather Artist: Chasing Storms With Sculpture

Rion Nakaya

The Master Microfixer Teaching the World to Fix iPhones

Rion Nakaya

The Future Forest: 3 tons of plastic waste transform a botanical garden in Mexico

Rion Nakaya

Tape Tapping with Open Reel Ensemble

Rion Nakaya