Ethical Trainers

Trainers have become status symbols in popular culture as much as practical items, with some trainers selling for millions at prestigious auctions like rare artworks.

Over 20 billion shoes are produced annually worldwide with around 300m pairs of trainers alone thrown out every year, which are mostly made from problematic and complex combinations of materials that barely degrade.

Ultimately, we need fewer trainers in the world. But while some trainers are an "affordable luxury treat" and trainer company profits continue to rise, what does buying an ethical trainer look like?

What are ethical trainers?

To find ethical trainers we looked at the materials used to make trainers, including use of animal leather, synthetic materials and plant based vegan options. We also looked at workers' rights and supply chain issues, and whether you can recycle or repair your trainers. 

This guide features the biggest names in trainer footwear like Nike and Adidas, alongside secondhand retailers and small specialist vegan and vegetarian brands. 

Unsurprisingly, some brands score very badly, with over half the brands scoring under 25 points (out of 100). However, there are some high scoring ethical brands available.

Read on to find out where your favourite brand comes in our guide to ethical trainers. 

How ethical is Nike Inc and its empire?

Nike towers over its competitors, with its dominance visible everywhere from professional sports to streetwear. The overwhelming majority of the world's most expensive collector's item trainers are Nikes, largely thanks to its partnership with Michael Jordan.

Although Nike’s popularity is indisputable, what about its ethics? Nike has repeatedly faced criticism for the treatment of workers in its supply chain.

Nike, among others including Puma and M&S, has sourced from factories in India which pay below the legal minimum, where workers have said that they cannot feed their children and they sometimes only receive half of what they need to survive.

Nike has also been accused of sourcing from Chinese companies using or benefitting from Uyghur forced labour, although it says it no longer sources from Xinjiang.

In 2020, it failed to pay Cambodian workers $1.4m in compensation and damages after a factory suddenly closed during the COVID pandemic. Although Nike has said it didn’t source from the factory, labour groups have evidence to the contrary showing that the factory was producing for Nike. Labour and human rights NGOs have issued a joint statement to Nike in support of the workers. Nike has also refused to compensate workers who were denied legally owed pandemic furlough pay by a factory in Thailand employing mostly migrant workers.

Nike had also been part of a lawsuit dating back to 2018, with over 5,000 pages of records detailing a culture of sexism, bullying, and fear of speaking out for female employees. One female employee said that Nike was “a giant men’s sports team, where favouritism prevails and females couldn’t possibly play in the sandbox."

Head to head: the best selling trainer brands 

How do two of the biggest selling brands of trainers, Adidas and Nike, compare in a head to head on ethics?  

*Better Cotton, organic and recycled

What footwear materials are sustainable?

The main materials used in trainers are leather and suede, natural textiles (cotton, wool, and silk in sports trainers), synthetics (polyester, nylon, spandex), rubber, foam, and plastic.

We awarded points in our sustainable materials column for action on reducing impacts, such as:

• designing trainers for recycling or repair
• biodegradable uppers
• plant-based options
• organic or recycled cotton
• use of recycled materials
• taking steps to reduce the impacts of leather, polyurethane, and PVC.

Recycled components in trainers

We found that recycled polyester was the most popular material to come from a recycled source. 

Some brands used more recycled polyester than others. Of polyester used, the following brands used the following amounts of recycled polyester

• Adidas uses 96% recycled polyester
• On Running 85%
• Puma 48%
• Nike 46%
• New Balance 44%
• Veja 40.7%
• VF Corporation 40% (Vans, Altra)
• M&S 35%
• ASICS 30%,
• Vivobarefoot 24.5%

On its website, Hoka lists how much of each polyester component per trainer was made from recycled polyester.

Other companies said that they use recycled polyester but didn’t say how much, such as Hanesbrands (Champion), PVH Corporation (Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger), and Wolverine World Wide, Inc (Merrell and Saucony).

Less commonly used was recycled cotton. 

All of the cotton used in Ethletic, On Running, and Veja trainers is recycled or organic. Nike uses very small amounts of recycled cotton.

Recycled rubber is used for Fila insoles, one of Po-Zu soles, 70% of SAYE soles, and 10% of Vivobarefoot soles.
Pangaia uses recycled plastic tips for its laces as well as selling a trainer which is 100% recycled polyamide.

SAYE also uses recycled polyurethane from mattress waste, recycled PET yarn, and Seaqual® yarn from “fishing communities to transform post-consumer plastic and upcycled marine plastic into high-quality yarn.”
 

Use of leather in trainers

Most of the companies we rated sold leather trainers. In 2023, Deckers alone used “approximately 45.77 million sq. ft. of leather and suede”. 

As well as animal rights and animal welfare issues associated with leather, the leather industry is highly polluting and a large source of materials-based emissions. We were looking for companies that were taking action to reduce these impacts. 

Chrome-free leather is processed without the use of chromium, heavy metals, and particular acids. It also means that water use is reduced and water is recyclable after use, which is not possible with chrome leather. Brands that use chrome-free leather include New Balance, Vagabond (not all of its collection), and Veja.

Vegetable-tanned leather uses tannins from trees or other organic fibres during processing, compared to animal-based oil. Veja was using vegetable-tanned leather up until 2015 but said that the costs were too high, so it’s looking to replace leather with bio-based materials. Vivobarefoot says that it aims to source chrome-free vegetable-tanned leather in future.

Adidas, Deckers Outdoor Corporation, New Balance, Nike, Vagabond, and Veja use leather that is Leather Working Group (LWG) certified, meaning it’s audited for environmental impact and traceability.

Deckers Outdoor Corporation (Hoka) also had a detailed policy for leather originating from the Brazilian Amazon and requirements for suppliers to provide documentation that the skins were not originating from cows in regions associated with deforestation. 

See our separate article on leather versus synthetics in footwear.

Are there any alternatives to leather?

A number of companies are using or developing plant-based innovations to find alternatives to fossil fuel and leather-based trainers:

• SAYE uses bio-based vegan leather made from corn, apple, cactus, and mango
• Pangaia uses grape leather
• Veja is experimenting with rice waste, uses Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), a foam-like rubber from sugarcane, and has developed a vegan alternative to leather which is currently 54% bio-based
• Will’s Vegan Shoes mostly uses bio-based vegan leather as well as majority bio-based coating oil
• Hylo uses sugarcane and corn which make up around 40% of each trainer.

Are there any ethical football boots?

As a sport to both play in local groups and to watch, it doesn’t get much bigger than football. A lot of the brands in our guide sell football boots, with the same companies who dominate the trainers market dominating the football market (including advertising). That means Nike and Adidas.

Kangaroo leather in football boots

It might surprise some that kangaroo leather, also known as k-leather, is commonly used in football boots. The issue was made famous when David Beckham wore kangaroo leather shoes in the 2002 World Cup, and the topic is now back with NGOs led by Eurogroup for Animals putting pressure on Adidas to drop kangaroo leather in its trainers, following commitments in 2023 from Nike and Puma.

As an alternative, Nike is making its football boots from synthetic materials instead, which has invited criticism by some. 

When searching for ‘ethical football boots’ one brand comes up again and again: Sokita. It’s a relatively new brand with a variety of vegan options and claims that its football boots are made from 56% “eco-friendly” and “earth-friendly” materials. It uses recycled plastic, castor oil, and … kangaroo leather.

While there are some bio-based innovations happening in the trainers market as a whole, it looks like football boots aren’t keeping pace.

Football Rebooted

Football Rebooted is a national campaign where anyone can donate or claim used football boots from points across the UK. This is not only great for environmental reasons, but also means that football gear can be accessible for more people.

What are trainer brands doing about their climate impact?

Most of the carbon emissions of footwear companies come from their materials, with leather coming at the top due to the impacts of cattle farming and the processing of animal skin into a wearable material. Collective Fashion Justice estimates that a pair of shoes made from cow leather has a carbon impact of 40.7kg CO2e compared to 5.8kg CO2e for a pair of PU shoes.

Themes from companies’ sustainability reports included the use of renewable energy, reducing air freight, increasing recycled content, reducing plastic-based packaging, reducing water use, and some were researching alternative bio-based materials. Companies scored better for climate if they had a focus on their main impacts from their supply chain and products (rather than talking about trivial ones), and had not only targets but also detailed plans of action to achieve them.

The low scorers on our table either had very little action or were making misleading statements about their emissions.

For example, in 2022, NGO Zero Waste France filed a court complaint against Adidas and New Balance for greenwashing, with slogans such as “solution against plastic waste”. 

Will’s Vegan Shoes claims that "Everything we make and do is Carbon Neutral" but this appears to be based on offsetting, with no acknowledgement of the need for it to cut its primary emissions. Similarly, Allbirds is advertising "the world's first net zero carbon shoe" despite the company as a whole still having large emissions. 

Is it possible to recycle trainers?

It’s not always clear what companies mean when they say that they ‘recycle’ trainers. The way that trainers are made in the first place and the combinations of materials makes them very hard to recycle. Multiple companies were talking about circular principles, but only a handful were doing meaningful things.

The average trainer contains 65 components (according to Hylo) and each component can be made up from a complex mix of materials. 

Hylo says it applies "the principle of circularity at the start of the shoe’s life" by only including 16 components in its trainers which makes it easier to break down for recycling. 

Vivobarefoot sends some of its trainers to a footwear recycling company in the Netherlands called Fast Feet Grinded, which separates the materials to produce footwear or to sell on for other use. 

Some of Ethletic’s trainers are made largely from cotton and rubber and have very few components, which can be separated more easily. Ethletic says it’s in the process of creating a recycling system.

Will’s Vegan Shoes has a service where old pairs of trainers can be returned and used for new soles and uppers.

Thousand Fell (not ranked here) has made a fully recyclable trainer where every component is recyclable, however it only ships to the US and Canada.

How to extend the life of your trainers

You can now find cleaning products in the form of specialist trainer brushes, wipes, and sprays just for trainers. Cleaning tips found online also often involve selling you something. But are these necessary to keep your trainers in good shape?

People have been cleaning their shoes long before ‘trainer wipes’ came along. There is mixed opinion about putting trainers in a washing machine or not depending on what they’re made from, but less controversial are things including:

• using an old toothbrush or cloth with soapy water to get to stains
• appropriate storage in a dry place
• brushing off dry dirt
• cleaning your laces and soles regularly

More obvious things include not wearing light cotton trainers on muddy walks (we’ve all been there).

You might also want to try a gentle laundry bar. Ethique, featured in our guide to make up, sells solid laundry and stain remover bars that come in plastic-free packaging, are vegan, and are not tested on animals.

Can you repair trainers?

Companies that offer repair services: Hylo, Veja, and Vivobarefoot.

Can you wear secondhand trainers?

Many fungi and bacteria lurk on feet and in shoes, with some things being contagious. This might be a reason that secondhand trainers might feel intuitively less appealing than a secondhand jumper.

Spraying a small amount of disinfectant inside and letting your newly bought secondhand trainers have an air dry outside for a few days is generally a good idea, as is letting your trainers dry from sweaty feet in between uses. 

Lots of secondhand trainers for sale are still in good condition and often haven’t been worn much, so they should still have plenty of wear left in them.

Workers’ rights in trainer supply chains

We look for policies to protect workers’ rights in company supply chains and also for evidence of action (or inaction).

Ethletic stood out for its focus on a Fairtrade supply chain and employing full-time workers in its factory rather than temporary or subcontracted workers.

All of Veja’s factories are located in Brazil, with its raw materials from Brazil and Peru. Veja calculated how much its trainers cost to produce compared to those made in China and concluded it cost five times more due to its fair trade and organic materials and principles. On its organic cotton it says, “At the beginning of the year, we agree on the price of cotton signing a contract valid for two years with the producers. That way, the producers know how much they will earn from the harvest before planting a single seed.”

Chinese giant Anta Sports (Arc'Teryx and Salomon) made headlines for publicly saying that it would keep sourcing its cotton from Xinjiang, despite its association with human rights violations and forced Uyghur labour. NBA legend Kyrie Irving became an executive of Anta Sports in 2023 and has been facing increasing public pressure in the face of Anta’s association with human rights abuses.
 

Price comparison of ethical and big brand trainers 

We looked at the price of trainers from a sample of brands at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of our score table. We compared the prices when buying new from their websites, versus buying secondhand from Preworn and eBay. Preworn had far fewer items across all of the brands compared to eBay which is why we included both platforms.

Prices vary a lot for secondhand trainers, so we took the first five items we found to make an average. The more ethical brands were much harder to find secondhand, due to producing far fewer trainers in general.

Big pay for directors of trainers and sports brands

Our company ethos column includes directors’ pay. Not all of the companies we rated disclosed annual salaries, but the highest we came across were: 

• Authentic Brands €43.9m (£34.8m) (Reebok)
• Nike $32.8m (£26m)
• Skechers $22.1m (£17.5m)
• Adidas €11.5m (£9.8m)
• PVH Corp $12.1m (£9.6m) (Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger)
• VF Corp $11.49m (£9.15m) (Vans, Altra)
• Deckers $11.4m (£9.1m) (Hoka)
• Designer Brands $11.32m (£9m) (Topo Athletic)
• Under Armour $11.3m (£9m)
• Hanesbrands $9.2m (£7.3m) (Champion)

We always highlight the pay cheques of company directors because of the massive inequality between them and the salaries of workers in their supply chains.