Recycling

Why are we better than traditionally recycled flip-flops?

Recycled shoes are made of plastic that was once used for something else. Garden pots, plastic bags and garbage bags can be made into recycled standard shoes.

The problem with plastics recycling, however, is that it is not a real, long-term solution to the global plastics crisis. We praise the fact that companies are reusing plastic that consumers no longer need, but even this plastic will decompose and eventually find its way to landfill. The path is more complicated, but the result is the same.

Our Waves are different. We do not use recycled plastic to make the shoes. Instead, we make them from 100% natural rubber that breaks down harmlessly in the ground.

This way we are convinced that our Waves are better for the environment than the standard flip-flops made of recycled plastic. They eliminate the risk of plastic entering the natural environment.

Don’t get us wrong, we still recycle!

This does not mean that we do not recycle at all, we do!

You can recycle not only plastic, but also rubber. We use discarded waves and remnants from our manufacturing process and granulate them. This way they are processed into new products.

Trust like you, we take the environment seriously and do everything we can to ensure that the products we make have minimal impact on nature.

Recycling is an important part of our business; it is only slightly different from the type of plastic recycling you may already know. We believe that if you are an environmentally conscious person, there is no better choice than Waves for you.

No matter which model you choose, you can be sure that you will get much more than just a normal recycled shoe.

Why natural rubber is so much better than recycled plastic

We use natural rubber for the production of our footwear. This is due to the unique properties it possesses.

In general there are two types of polymers: natural and synthetic. Natural polymers include natural rubber, while synthetic polymers include all synthetic plastics derived from petroleum, such as PET and UPVC.

Natural rubber is harvested from various tree species and comes out as a kind of milky liquid. The raw polymer consists of a mixture of isoprene. During processing, impurities are removed and the isoprene is stimulated to form long chains, which gives the rubber its characteristic properties.

The properties of these chemical chains make this footwear made of natural rubber so much more environmentally friendly than conventional recycled plastics. Bacteria and other organisms have a chemical property that can break the bonds between the chains by processing the components of the rubber and transforming them into harmless waste products.

However, the same does not apply to synthetic plastics or rubber. Microorganisms cannot break their chemical bonds, which means that large plastic fragments can remain in the environment for hundreds of years, as well as microplastic and petroleum waste that later finds its way into our oceans.