Every year, billions of plastic insoles and hotel slippers are burned or dumped in landfills worldwide after use. Dutch start-up Primal Soles replaces these disposable products with cork ones and can then recycle them endlessly. Outdoor sports chain Bever and Hotel Jakarta in Amsterdam are the first major customers.
Primal Soles had its first major breakthrough a few weeks ago. Bever is going to replace the plastic insoles in shoes with a cork alternative in all fifty stores of the chain. “A recognition by one of the market leaders in the industry,” says David Even, who founded Primal Soles in 2021 with his brother Jeremy.
Endlessly recyclable
The insoles consist of three layers. The top layer is made of natural cork from the Mediterranean. Cork is infinitely recyclable due to its composition. The other layers are made of recycled cork and plastic footwear waste. Harvesting cork bark from the cork oak is harmless and is even good for the tree. Removing the bark increases CO2 absorption and promotes the regenerative capacity of the tree. The cork used can be recycled infinitely within a closed loop. Primal Soles collects the insoles after use and has them recycled by a factory in Portugal. This material is used again and again for the bottom of new insoles.
Popular with outdoor stores
Primal Soles wants to change the footwear market with it and has already spoken to well-known brands. Bever is the first to bite. The outdoor store chain is part of AS Adventure, which also has stores in Belgium, Luxembourg and France. The Even brothers see expansion opportunities there. “But we are also talking to the Scandinavian and Swiss equivalents of Bever. We have a very good range for outdoor stores. The quality is good, we are cheaper and we have the sustainability aspect. That is why they like us,” says David.
Billions of flip-flops thrown away
Footwear is just one industry the startup is targeting. Another is the hotel industry, or rather the billions of plastic slippers that hotels put in their rooms every year and that guests usually throw away after using them once. They then end up in waste incinerators, landfills or – even worse – as microplastics in the oceans. “That system is extremely outdated and wasteful. It’s time to change that,” says Even.
60,000 cork hotel slippers
The start-up has therefore introduced cork slippers. “The world’s first fully circular hotel slippers,” he says. “Our solution produces no waste, is made and recycled in Europe and reduces the CO footprint by 83 percent. No one else in the market does this.” According to him, this is not wishful thinking. To prove that it can be done differently, Primal Soles has been running a two-year pilot project with Hotel Jakarta in Amsterdam since the beginning of this year. The hotel has purchased 60,000 cork slippers for this purpose.
Waste is worth money
The start-up now collects thousands of used pairs and has them upcycled into new slippers. “So we do what we promise. The waste is worth money. We bring the material to our factory in Portugal. They pay for the waste, upcycle it and use 100 percent of the material in the new slippers,” says Even. “We measure everything, we report on the impact and show what is possible with this product.”
See why brothers David and Jeremy Even started Primal Soles:
CO2 negative
Primal Soles has had a life cycle analysis (LCA) carried out for its products and it shows that the entire process is CO2 negative. This is partly because the insoles last a long time. After a year, customers can return the insoles to Bever. The company has baskets in all stores where customers can throw their used items in for reuse. The start-up collects the soles again in this way. The cork hotel slippers are so good that guests use them more than once and even take them home. "Cork also has many hygienic advantages. That is why Birkenstock puts it in the footbed of its sandals," says Even.
Scale to millions of slippers
The start-up has just opened an investment round to raise 500,000 euros to scale up over the next three years. A major investor recently came forward for this. In five years, the start-up wants to sell millions of cork hotel slippers per year and have all the major chains as customers. Hotel Jakarta is part of Westcord hotels. This chain consists of sixteen hotels that use 30,000 plastic slippers per year per hotel. Even: “If we get that chain on board, we are already talking about a million cork slippers per year. Ultimately, we also want to grow our own brand. Customers like to associate themselves with us. Hotel Jakarta, for example, wanted to tell our story and insisted that our name should appear on the slippers.”
Source: Change Inc.
