GreenPlax Tess Footwear by Wilson Hsu is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2021 Bronze A' Design Award in Footwear, Shoes and Boots Design Competition Category.
BronzeFootwear· 2021
GreenPlax Tess Footwear
by Wilson Hsu
Client: Ccilu International Inc.
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Footwear Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #120792The Design
About GreenPlax Tess Footwear
GreenPlax Tess designs as a reminder for the bottle upcycling process. Every 20 plastic bottles recycle material can make one pair of GreenPlax Tess in every major component. The outsole is particularly made from straight scraps of bottles while imitating its shapes. The color palette and silhouette design also replicate some beverage brands to create a direct visual impact, as a reminder for people of the sustainable issues from plastic bottles throw-away behaviors. It is also water-repellent, dirt-proof, and moisture-wicking. Sustainability is their forwarding mission bear in mind.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
GreenPlax Tess Footwear is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. GreenPlax Tess Footwear is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. GreenPlax Tess Footwear splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to upcycling plastic bottles in GreenPlax Tess Footwear, particularly the outsole design mimicking bottle shapes, represents a significant breakthrough in sustainable footwear - could you elaborate on how this visual connection helps raise awareness about plastic waste?
The visual design of GreenPlax Tess Footwear effectively raises awareness about plastic waste by creating a direct link between the shoe and its recycled origin. The outsole is designed to mimic plastic bottle parts, providing a constant visual reminder of the material's source. The overall aesthetic, including colors and silhouette, is inspired by beverage bottle brands, prompting consumers to consider their consumption habits and the issue of plastic waste. This design serves as tangible proof of concept for the circular economy, demonstrating how waste can be transformed into desirable products. Furthermore, the unique appearance of the shoe acts as a conversation starter, allowing wearers to share the story behind the footwear and advocate for sustainable practices. The design uses "dynamic aesthetics" to convey a message of transformation and highlight the need to address plastic pollution.
The development of GreenPlax Tess Footwear required transforming straight bottle scraps into functional outsoles - what were the key technical challenges your team faced in creating this patented technology, and how did you overcome them?
The key technical challenge was transforming rigid PET bottle shatter into a high-performance, flexible outsole material with excellent grip and durability, properties very different from the original material. The team overcame this through their patented GreenPlax® technology, involving a specific process to sort, clean, shred, and pelletize the plastic shatter into a concentrate masterbatch, enabling injection molding into complex, functional shoe components. This process allowed the creation of a material with comparable performance to virgin materials, while maintaining properties like water resistance and elasticity.
Given that GreenPlax Tess Footwear upcycles 20 plastic bottles per pair while maintaining high-performance features like water repellency and breathability, how did you balance sustainability goals with ensuring premium comfort and functionality?
GreenPlax balanced sustainability with comfort and functionality by transforming plastic shatter into highly functional material through patented technology and incorporating additional comfort elements. Material Science: The core GreenPlax® technology sorts, cleans, and processes plastic bottles into a concentrate masterbatch that is injection molded into flexible yet resilient components, including the outsole.Performance Integration: A special nano-level coating provides water repellency, dirt/oil proofing, and breathability, allowing the recycled material to perform like high-performance functional apparel fabrics.Comfort Engineering: The design incorporates an organic sock-liner for moisture-wicking and odor control, and a responsive high-tech sole offering resilience and support, ensuring comfort comparable to traditional high-quality sneakers.Multi-component approach: The entire shoe (upper, insole, outsole) is made with the help of recycled plastics, proving that a circular economy approach can meet rigorous performance and comfort standards without compromise.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Ccilu upcycles plastic bottles by brand and turns them into every major component of GreenPlax Tess. The outsole is particularly made from straight scraps of the bottles while imitating its curves and shapes, which creates direct visual impacts. One pair of shoes upcycles 20 plastic bottles, and it is also water-repellent, dirt/oil proof, anti-UV, air-breathable, moisture-wicking, fast-drying, odor/mildew-control, resilient, supportive, and great grip.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- For Man's US 9: 11 mm x 29.5 mm x 10 mm for one foot.
Made from a special RPET compound containing Recycled Plastic bottles and the best quality and super lightweight EVA. - Tags
- sustainability, recycle, reuse, re-purpose, Global warming, climate change, Eco-friendly, Ccilu, GreenPlax, PPET
- Production Technology
- Ccilu upcycles the bottles and makes them into the RPET yarns used in the upper, where some arrows of recycled perform and decorate, and the sock-liner. Exclusively invented the patented tech to fuse and foam the straight scraps, including the caps and the labels, of the bottles with polyurethane which is to form the outsole. Upcycle the bottles by beverage brand and make them into corresponding product SKUs. The shape and the curve of the outsole were inspired by the bottle too so that it has strong associations and engagements among the specific beverage brand.
- Design Challenge
- In the past, the industry was simply able to upcycle the bottles and make them the fabrics used in the upper and sock-liner. Every brand was not much different. With the new design and new tech Ccilu further upcycles the bottles and turns them into the outsole carrying strong visual impacts. Ccilu significantly increases the usage of the bottles in the footwear, as well as draws more interest from the users, who are the most critical part of the social movements and the circular economy. GreenPlax Tess supports Ccilu to be one step closer to its brand vision which is to develop the first carbon-neutral footwear by the end of 2021.
- Research
- The first plastic bottle was invented in 1947 and till today it has become the most important element in our daily life. However, it is also one of the most devastating issues in our environment and health. Use design-driven and patented technologies to significantly reduce the number of wasted bottles and increase awareness of people and understanding of the concepts and real products of the circular economy. From water, beverage, food, cosmetics, and any other business that needs plastic containers, many leading companies are able to join our efforts and make it a global and long-term movement for mother earth.
- Inspiration
- The world consumes 1 million plastic bottles every minute and simply 4% of them are properly recycled, others mostly end up in the oceans and through the food chain come back to us in the form of micro-plastics. Every week each of us ingests 5 grams of micro-plastics which equals 1 credit card. The one-time used plastic bottles bring terrible impacts on our environment as well as our health. Ccilu comes up with the designs and the tech of upcycling the hazardous wastes to turn them into it.
- Project Duration
- The project started in July 2019 in Taiwan and finished in August 2020 in Taiwan, and planned to go to market in Q3 2021.
- Operation Flow
- The engineered recycled plastic bottle makes the upper, with a special layer of nano-level coating, provides the full set of functional features including water-repellent, dirt and oil proof, anti-UV, and air-breathable. The organic sock-liner offers moisture-wicking, fast-drying, and odor control. The high-tech sole is responsive, resilient, supportive, and great grip. Users are able to wear it on all kinds of occasions and all day long. Persist with all the core values of a high-quality sneaker and offers unique footwear experiences while it is made from recycled plastic bottles, with sustainable mindsets and technologies.
- Team Members
- President: Wilson Hsu
Chairman: Steve Hsu
Product Director: Alvin Liu
Product Designer: Perry Lang
Product Designer: Zen Chang
Marketing Director: Joseph Chang - Image Credits
- Image #No1,2,3,4,5: Photographer / Illustrator / Creator (Joseph Chang/Ccilu international Inc.)
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