Let’s face it, how typically do you consider the footbed of your favourite working shoe? Runners love to speak a couple of shoe’s outsole, midsole, and higher, however the insole, a vital part of a shoe’s consolation, is commonly ignored.
A part of this can be resulting from the truth that main footbed producer OrthoLite has been offering greater than 450-plus high footwear manufacturers with insoles that work so nicely that folks neglect how crucial they’re for a shoe to carry out. Celebrating their twenty fifth anniversary in 2022, the corporate is proud to be the most important producer and provider of insoles for all sorts of footwear, together with athletic, working, consolation, life-style, and trend. Greater than 500 million pairs of footwear use their insoles annually, so the possibilities are excessive that a number of of the trainers in your closet sport OrthoLite insoles.
However OrthoLite doesn’t solely deal with creating comfy insoles, the corporate can also be devoted to environmental sustainability. Since its beginnings, OrthoLite has labored laborious to search out methods to scale back waste and power use in its manufacturing processes, all whereas nonetheless creating extremely practical and comfy merchandise. Shoe manufacturers, together with adidas, Asics, New Steadiness, Brooks, Reebok, HOKA, and Salomon, have benefitted from OrthoLite’s dedication to consolation, efficiency, and sustainability.
OrthoLite makes insoles for a lot of main shoe manufacturers. All images: OrthoLite
A Historical past of Environmentally Pleasant Practices
Since day one, OrthoLite has been devoted to the continuous enchancment of its sustainable manufacturing processes worldwide. Not solely does the model wish to create nice merchandise, however OrthoLite seeks to do it with minimal environmental impression.
As a result of OrthoLite is a vertically built-in firm that owns its factories, it has been capable of incorporate environmentally pleasant practices to scale back waste and power use. The corporate’s dedication to growing operational efficiencies, utilizing photo voltaic panels for power, and having a wastewater remedy facility has earned the corporate scores above the ninetieth percentile from the Higg Index, a normal for assessing the environmental sustainability of a provide chain for a product.
OrthoLite has all the time been dedicated to environmentally sustainable manufacturing.
OrthoLite just lately earned World Recycled Normal certification, a normal for monitoring and verifying a product’s recycled supplies, at its Vietnam facility, which underscores OrthoLite’s energetic dedication to enhancing sustainable operations. Its factories even have a Zero Waste initiative and their very own recycling services. The corporate is actively concerned within the analysis and improvement of sustainable manufacturing practices. The objective is to attenuate the usage of poisonous chemical substances and components of their processes to guard the surroundings.
When OrthoLite first began manufacturing insoles in 1997, the corporate’s high objective was to create extra comfy footwear. A big improve from the fundamental foam insoles that existed on the time, OrthoLite’s replacements had been product of open-cell polyurethane foam. This new materials helped preserve toes cooler and drier. Early on, the corporate dedicated itself to creating sustainable manufacturing practices. OrthoLite targeted on discovering round manufacturing options the place the whole lot that went into their merchandise might get recycled or composted. Its final objective nonetheless stays zero waste.
Trendy Sustainable Insole Know-how
By creating trust-based relationships with the main shoe manufacturers, OrthoLite is ready to customise its insoles for the particular wants of assorted shoe producers. The corporate has the most important portfolio of proprietary eco-technologies for insoles within the trade. With these choices, OrthoLite can create merchandise with varied ranges of eco-content, starting from 5% to 98%. By working intently with corporations, the model is ready to meet the particular efficiency and sustainability wants that manufacturers have for several types of footwear.
OrthoLite additionally has two new choices for sustainably created insoles, the HybridPlus-Recycled™ and the HybridPlus-Bio™. Each new fashions of insoles have excessive ranges of recycled supplies.
The HybridPlus-Recycled™ insole incorporates 50% recycled content material, together with recycled rubber powder and polyurethane foam. The HybridPlus-Bio™ goes a step additional, utilizing 7% bio-oil within the insole to attenuate the petroleum used within the manufacturing of the product.
The OrthoLite HybridPlus-Recycled™ insole.
The OrthoLite HybridPlus-Bio™ Insole.
The 2 insoles are among the many newest improvements to come back from OrthoLite’s crew. The corporate continues to pursue the objective of repurposing waste supplies from its manufacturing processes. And whereas the brand new insoles are made with new supplies, OrthoLite refuses to compromise on consolation and efficiency.
OrthoLite Cirql: The Subsequent Era of Sustainable Footwear Elements
Many shoe midsoles and insoles are made with EVA foam, a non-recyclable materials. Created with non-renewable chemical compounds that don’t biodegrade, typically known as “ceaselessly chemical substances,” EVA is just not notably environmentally pleasant.
OrthoLite focuses on innovation and its international improvement crew prides itself in bringing new ideas to life for its model companions. For instance, OrthoLite had a greater thought for creating foam for midsoles, creating Cirql, a soil-to-soil round product resolution. This foam product, introduced in early 2022 and getting into into preliminary improvement with model companions in 2023, is free from EVA plastics and is created from plant and different biodegradable supplies. Even the processing of the fabric is finished in a zero-waste and chemical-free method.
The brand new Cirql manufacturing facility making true soil-to-soil merchandise.
After a shoe wears out, the Cirql materials will both biodegrade or will be recycled, abandoning no microplastics or different dangerous chemical substances to pollute the earth. This development in foam know-how has the potential to make the shoe manufacturing course of far more sustainable by serving to footwear manufacturers elevate their sustainability efforts via cleaner manufacturing and utilizing a real soil-to-soil product.
OrthoLite insoles are made with environmental sustainability in thoughts.
The Way forward for Insoles is Comfy and Sustainable
With unbelievable progress within the working trade, it’s necessary for manufacturers to consider sustainable practices not less than as a lot as they’re considering of making a snug product.
OrthoLite is main the best way, offering choices for high manufacturers to create footwear in a sustainable method. OrthoLite believes that environmentally round product manufacturing, the place the whole lot that goes into making a product is biodegradable or recyclable, is the best way of the longer term. OrthoLite footbeds replicate the corporate’s dedication to the surroundings and the development of sustainable practices.
So the subsequent time you discover that comfy OrthoLite insole in your favourite working shoe, you may as well contemplate that it’s an insole made with the way forward for your prized trails in thoughts.
The OrthoLite Cirql injection machine.
