How We are Using Recycled Plastic in Our Socks

At Feetures, we believe in creating socks that are made to last a lifetime and live up to the standards of our community. We wake up every day with the purpose of improving our products and providing you with the best performance socks possible. Being built on a Lifetime Guarantee, sustainability has always been one of our 6 core values as a company. We are excited to take our sustainable practices one step further by incorporating yarn made from recycled plastic bottles in our socks!

You are probably thinking how is this possible and why is it so important?

How are we able to make socks out of discarded plastic bottles?
The process is fairly simple. First, plastic bottles are sourced from recycling or waste management facilities. The bottles are then washed and chopped into flakes. From there, the flakes are melted down into chips and extruded into filaments that form fibers. Our yarn is then created from those fibers through a spinning and texturing process. If you are wondering if our recycled socks will be just as comfortable and performance driven as the socks you know and love, the answer is yes! Yarn made from recycled plastic is essentially non-virgin polyester. Whereas virgin polyester is derived from oil, ours comes from recycled plastic!

Why is this so important?
Of all the plastic that ever existed (about 400 million metric tons), more than half was produced in the past 15 years. On average, Americans throw away more than 60 billion plastic bottles every year with only about a 9% recycling rate. This is a huge problem! With sustainability and reducing the use of single-use plastic at the forefront of many conversations, we asked ourselves, ‘How can we be part of the solution?’ Small steps lead to big changes. By incorporating recycled plastic yarn into our products, one pair of socks is equal to diverting roughly 2 plastic bottles* from the landfill. That means when you purchase any of our Elite Max Cushion, Everyday Crew or Everyday No Show socks you are helping save plastic bottles that would have otherwise been thrown away.

Taking steps to becoming a more sustainable company goes beyond just the materials we use in our products. In addition to utilizing yarn made from recycled bottles, we are looking for more opportunities to reduce waste in other areas of our business as well. We are now using recycled materials instead of poly bags to package our 3 pair packs and are implementing more sustainable practices in our distribution center. During the product development and manufacturing stages of production, we use 3D rendering and advanced color matching programs that also help us reduce manufacturing waste. As always, we are constantly pushing to design durable products with a Lifetime Guarantee, because there is nothing more sustainable than creating quality products made to last.

*Each pair of socks contains enough plastic to save 1.8 plastic bottles from the landfill.