GreenPlax Footwear by Ccilu International Inc. is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 Silver A' Design Award in Footwear, Shoes and Boots Design Competition Category.
SilverFootwear· 2020
GreenPlax Footwear
Client: Ccilu International Inc.
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Footwear Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #96057The Design
About GreenPlax Footwear
Trying to protect the ecosystem and the environment, as well as to leave beautiful mother earth for future generations, Ccilu spent 5 years developing GreenPlax technology and created the first-ever footwear collection made primarily out of plastic bottles retrieved from the oceans. The recycled plastic bottles are used for every major component in the shoes, uppers, insoles, and outsoles, turns the hazardous wastes into green material, moreover, the GeenPlax is bottomed-up with 100+ independent and resilient dots to deliver barefoot comfort.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
GreenPlax Footwear is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. GreenPlax Footwear is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. GreenPlax Footwear is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Sustainable Performance Footwear Collection
We transform ocean plastic into award-winning footwear that delivers barefoot comfort and environmental responsibility. Our patented GreenPlax technology creates lightweight, resilient shoes from recycled bottles. Join the movement for sustainable fashion.
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Grand Interview
Your innovative GreenPlax Footwear represents a significant breakthrough in sustainable footwear design - could you walk us through the five-year journey of developing this revolutionary technology that transforms ocean-retrieved plastic bottles into every major component of the shoe?
The development of GreenPlax Footwear began in April 2014 with the goal of addressing the severe issue of plastic pollution. Over five years, we focused on intensive research and innovation, starting with methods to retrieve, sort, and clean ocean-recovered plastic bottles. The biggest challenge was creating a process to transform the recycled bottles into usable materials for all major shoe components. By 2019, we had successfully developed a multi-step process: shredding the bottles, converting them into pellets, and then further processing these into fibers for fabrics and threads. This extensive journey culminated in the creation of the world’s first shoe where even the outsoles, along with the uppers and insoles, are made primarily from recycled plastic bottles, demonstrating a significant leap in sustainable footwear manufacturing.
The environmental impact statistics behind GreenPlax Footwear are striking - what inspired your team to specifically tackle ocean plastic pollution, and how did you overcome the technical challenges of creating high-performance footwear from recycled materials?
Our inspiration came from the alarming reports on the impact of plastic pollution, particularly the millions of plastic bottles discarded every minute, many of which end up in the ocean. The health and ecological consequences drove us to find a solution that not only recycles plastic but also prevents it from polluting our environment. Overcoming technical challenges involved extensive experimentation with material combinations, particularly merging RPET with EVA. We had to innovate new manufacturing techniques to ensure the materials retained high-performance characteristics such as flexibility, lightweight, and durability, while maintaining eco-friendliness.
GreenPlax Footwear's unique SKIVE-ON technology features 100+ independent resilient dots - could you elaborate on how this distinctive design element enhances barefoot comfort while maintaining the eco-friendly integrity of the product?
The SKIVE-ON technology is a groundbreaking design that incorporates over 100 independent, resilient dots in the outsole, enhancing comfort by mimicking the sensation of walking barefoot. This ensures excellent flexibility, lightweight performance, and grip, which are essential for modern footwear. These dots are made using a blend of recycled plastic pellets and EVA, staying true to our eco-friendly mission. The design reduces material usage while maintaining structural integrity, further enhancing the product’s sustainability without compromising user comfort.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Trying to protect the ecosystem and the environment, as well as to leave a beautiful mother earth for future generations, Ccilu spent 5 years developing GreenPlax technology. With GreenPlax technology Ccilu created the first-ever footwear collection made primarily out of plastic bottles retrieved from the oceans. The recycled plastic bottles are used for every major component in the shoes, including the uppers, insoles and outsoles.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- For Man's US 9: 11 mm x 29.5 mm x 10 mm for one foot. The main outsole material is "RPET" which is constituted by recycled plastic bottles from the ocean.
- Tags
- sustainability, recycle, reuse, re-purpose, Global warming, climate change, Eco-friendly, Ccilu, GreenPlax, Barefoot comfort
- Production Technology
- On average 1 pair of the GreenPlax footwear consumes 15 recycled plastic bottles. With SKIVE-ON technology, each pair of GreenPlax Renee footwear is bottomed-up with 100+ completely independent and highly resilient GreenPlax dots. The belief that both technology and lifestyle shall be sustainable has resulted in GreenPlax. A major milestone of the evolution of footwear industry.
The award-winning SKIVE-ON outsoles present the best experiences of super lightweight, barefoot comfort, flexibility, high resilience and great grip. - Design Challenge
- We overcame the difficulty of material combination between RPET and EVA to make this impossible challenge become possible to invent the first RPET outsole in the world. Entirely made from recycled plastic bottles instead of requiring petrochemical raw materials to save natural resources and reduces the burden on the environment.
- Research
- As research, globally 1 million plastic bottles are thrown away every minute and only 4% of them are recycled. When dumped in landfills the leached toxins cause a variety of health issues including cancer. In their final destination, they kill the ocean and lives. GreenPlax is the first-ever sneaker with every major component (upper, insole, and outsole) primarily made from recycled plastic bottles, contrastively the other footwears are merely able to use them to make some uppers fabrics.
- Inspiration
- The (IPCC) Report concluded, "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century". The largest human influence has been the emission of greenhouse gases. Particularly more than one million plastic bottles are thrown away every minute globally and less than 4% of these are properly recycled. Others end up in landfills, lots are in the ocean eventually. Something has to be done to keep the ocean clean for future generations.
- Project Duration
- The project started in April 2014 in Taiwan and finished in August 2019 in Taiwan.
- Operation Flow
- Scientific application to this practical problem:
1. Sort and clean recycled plastic bottles retrieved from the ocean.
2. Shred the recycled plastic bottles into smaller pieces.
3. Breakdown the pieces into perfectly shaped pellets.
4. Melt down the pellets and turn them into fibers. Fibers make the threads. Threads make fabric. And the fabric makes the upper part of the shoe and the lining covering Ortholite insole.
5. Mix remaining pellets with EVA and turn them into a high-performance outsole. - Patents
- For patents: "Patented. Patent Holder-Ccilu international. Year-2019. Jurisdiction-US."
- Team Members
- Wilson Hsu
Steve Hsu
Perry Lang
Joseph Chang - Image Credits
- Main visual : Photographer-Alvin Liu(Product manager) / Illustrator-Joseph Chang(Creative director) / Creator-Wilson Hsu(CEO)
Optional Image #No1~4 : Photographer-Alvin Liu(Product manager) / Illustrator-Joseph Chang(Creative director) / Creator-Wilson Hsu(CEO)
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