Allbirds announces the world’s first zero carbon shoe

Allbirds has created the world’s first net zero carbon shoe, the M0.0NSHOT. Its landmark carbon footprint — 0.0 kg CO₂e, versus an industry average of 14 kg CO₂e — was achieved without relying on offsets, after Allbirds completely reimagined the way it makes product.

This is one small footprint for a shoe, but could be one giant leap for the shoe industry, so Allbirds is open-sourcing the toolkit that took M0.0NSHOT to zero, and inviting others to follow in its footsteps.

“Creating a net zero carbon shoe that is commercially viable and scalable is the culmination of our entire back-catalog of work. M0.0NSHOT isn’t a silver bullet for the climate crisis — it’s a proof-point that, when we take sustainability seriously, and are laser focused on carbon reduction, we can make incredible breakthroughs,” says Tim Brown, co-founder and co-CEO of Allbirds.

M0.0NSHOT is the culmination of years of work and Allbirds’s focus on systematically reducing carbon in its business and products since its founding. In 2018, it created SweetFoam®, its first carbon negative material, which informed the new foam used in M0.0NSHOT. Then, in 2020, Allbirds became the first fashion brand to label products with carbon footprints. A year later, the brand announced a partnership with adidas to collaborate on what was, at that point, the lowest carbon shoe in the world: the Adizero x Allbirds.

After this project, shooting for a net zero carbon shoe became the natural next step. The Allbirds Futures Team—a cross-functional innovation team—took on that challenge in 2022, harnessing all of the brand’s previous learnings to design M0.0NSHOT.

This achievement was made possible by:

• Carbon-negative regenerative merino wool upper: Grown on Lake Hawea Station (LHS) in New Zealand.
• Carbon-negative sugarcane-based foam midsole: While most industry foams are primarily synthetic, Allbirds’s newly-developed SuperLight Foam boasts 80% bio content.
• Carbon-negative bioplastic eyelets: Allbirds has teamed up with Mango Materials to deploy an innovative new process that uses microorganisms to convert methane — the greenhouse gas sheep release when they burp — into a form of polymer that can be molded like other plastics, without the corresponding carbon footprint.
• The most carbon-efficient packaging Allbirds has ever had: With reduced space and weight required to transport — made with sugarcane-derived, carbon negative Green PE.
• Carbon-conscious transportation: A considered transportation plan with biofuel powered ocean shipping and electric trucking from port to warehouse.

In partnership with Lake Hawea Station and The New Zealand Merino Company, Allbirds is pioneering a new method of quantifying a product’s carbon footprint that accounts for materials and processes that capture carbon, as well as those that emit, to provide a more holistic view of emissions and, therefore, a more accurate picture of a product’s climate impact (see below for more details).

In other words, while some elements of the shoe’s creation emit carbon, others capture it, bringing the final product to net zero.

“We believe this will revolutionize the path to net zero, and act as rocket-fuel for the entire industry. We could spend decades debating the finer points of carbon sequestration, or we can innovate today with a common sense approach,” says Hana Kajimura, head of sustainability at Allbirds. “It’s about progress, not perfection. The scientists have shown us what’s possible — now it’s time for the fashion industry to carry the open-sourced learnings from M0.0NSHOT forward.”

“This new approach supports growers in their efforts to maintain, enhance, and increase carbon sequestration by giving them credit for land management that draws down carbon. This is a necessary step if we are to incentivize a shift towards regeneration and support changes being made on farms today, and it’s one that we are proud of supporting,” says Donna Chan, Regenerative Transformation Manager, The New Zealand Merino Company.

“Our imperative from day one at Lake Hawea Station was to demonstrate that farming can be part of the climate emergency solution. With our native reforestation projects and planting we sequester almost twice what we emit. On the other side of the ledger, we consciously reduce emissions. Lake Hawea Station is deeply committed to farming regeneratively, investing significantly in enhancing our biodiversity and have introduced new animal well-being programs and hydro and solar infrastructure. It is fantastic to work with a brand at the other end of the supply chain who shares our regenerative philosophy and values around climate action,” says Finn Ross, Lake Hawea Station.

“Mango Materials is thrilled that our novel technology, transforming methane into biomaterials, can contribute to Allbirds’s production of the world’s first zero carbon shoe,” says Molly Morse, CEO of Mango Materials.

M0.0NSHOT will take off in June when Allbirds reveals the shoe for the first time at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen.

To learn more about M0.0NSHOT, visit: www.allbirds.com/moonshot

About Allbirds, Inc. 

Headquartered in San Francisco, Allbirds is a global lifestyle brand that innovates with naturally derived materials to make better footwear and apparel products in a better way, while treading lighter on the planet. The Allbirds story began with superfine New Zealand merino wool and has since evolved to include eucalyptus tree fiber knit fabric, sugarcane-based EVA SweetFoam®, castor bean oil-based SwiftFoam™, and Plant Leather. Allbirds serves customers across 36 countries through 59 Allbirds stores and its e-commerce website, www.allbirds.com.

About M0.0NSHOT’s product carbon footprint calculation

Here’s how we account for net zero:

• First, we started by working with The New Zealand Merino Company’s regenerative wool program, ZQRX, to source M0.0NSHOT’s wool from Lake Hawea Station.
• Second, we calculated the specific farm-level carbon footprint of Lake Hawea Station. The organizational carbon footprint that forms the starting point for the allocation was developed independently of this project and verified by Toitū Envirocare, a New Zealand-based B Corp and carbon certification business.
• Then, we collaborated with The New Zealand Merino Company to translate this farm footprint into a product-level wool material carbon intensity for M0.0NSHOT.
• This new wool carbon intensity is used to calculate the product’s carbon footprint using the Allbirds Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Tool, with modifications. The initial Allbirds LCA Tool was third-party verified against the requirements of ISO 14067, which specifies principles, requirements and guidelines for calculating the carbon footprint of a product. 
• The carbon footprint of M0.0NSHOT accounts for on-farm carbon sequestration, in addition to emissions, which is a deviation from standard industry practice. As a result, the calculated carbon footprint for M0.0NSHOT, unlike Allbirds’ standard products, is not fully aligned to ISO 14067. 
• However, Allbirds believes this wool carbon intensity value captures a more comprehensive model of the total emissions fluxes happening on-farm.

Source

Allbirds, press release, 2023-03-21.

Supplier

Allbirds
Mango Materials
The New Zealand Merino Company

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