Public support in France for repairing shoes and keeping them for longer has come at a good time. A new  anti-waste law is about to provide financial incentives for mending and keeping footwear in circulation. 

A tennis shoe recently had an unfortunate encounter with a rotary cutter and survived to tell the tale (visually) thanks to the skill and creativity of a Paris-based shoe repair expert, Maximilien Mauriès. He took on the task to help France’s Conseil National du Cuir (CNC) demonstrate the repairability of shoes and other products made from leather.

CNC has shared a series of videos showing products, in this case a shoe donated by Angers-based brand Sessile, apparently meeting a gruesome end. Sessile sources leather from Italy for its shoe uppers and uses veg-tanned leather from Portugal in the linings. For the exercise with Maximilien Mauriès, it donated a shoe all in white leather, except for a navy blue tongue tip and heel cap, offering it up to the rotary blades of a milling machine. The video shows the machine’s blades shaving the top of the toe-box before ploughing into the lace and tongue and chewing up a large piece of the vamp, stopping just short of the quarter.

Next we see Mr Mauriès puzzling over the damaged product. He seems intrigued at first, perhaps over what might have caused such damage; perhaps CNC kept it secret. Then he shrugs and starts drawing and cutting out the new leather parts he needs, fits them into place and stitches them into the shoe. Next, he punches out some new eyelets and relaces the product, leaving it looking as good as new. “Leather products can be repaired,” CNC proclaims at the start. Then, as the video progresses, it urges consumers to take advantage of this and to take any imperfect leather products they have around the home to local repair shops for restoration. After it has shown in full Maximilien Mauriès’s mastery of the repair process, it ramps the message up, concluding with a hashtag proclaiming that leather and leather products can be indestructible.

It has won instant support for this campaign from another industry organisation, the Fédération Française de la Chaussure (FFC), or French Footwear Federation. One of the clear results of a consumer survey FFC carried out in the early part of this year was that an overwhelming majority of people viewed repairability as an important factor when choosing shoes. In fact, 90% of participants in the survey said they agreed with the notion that all shoes should be repairable so that people can wear them for longer. The timing of this was important; the survey coincided with fashion brands in France beginning to have an extensive, new anti-waste law, AGEC, at the forefront of their minds.

Force of the law

First presented in 2020, AGEC, (the name comes from ‘anti-gaspillage pour une économie circulaire’, ‘against waste for a circular economy’) has five main aims. It seeks to end the use of single-use plastic, to make sure consumers are better informed about the products they buy, to combat waste, to act against ‘built-in obsolescence’, and to encourage brands and manufacturers to make better products. There is much to unpack in this, so it is probably just as well that the French government has an AGEC vision that runs until 2040. 

Something that may jump out right away for leather industry representatives are some of the passages in AGEC that refer to waste from the food industry. Everyone should know that hides are waste from the food industry. It would be beneficial if hides mattered more to packer companies and cattle farmers, but their motivations are meat, milk and money. So dimly does leather’s light shine for them that 5.5 million hides went directly to waste in the US in 2019, followed by 4.8 million more in the same country in 2020.

Much of what AGEC says about waste from food focuses on the leftovers and vegetable peelings that people generate at home; it points out that this material has the potential to be turned into compost or as a source of energy. By January 1, 2024, all communities across France must have decided on the systems they will use to sort food waste at source and extract the greatest value they can from the material. Again, it is clear the teams that drafted the text of AGEC were not thinking of cattle hides here, but the principle is the same: we must put waste, including food waste (including hides, therefore) to the best use we can.

Benefits of investing in leather

Here is an interesting AGEC add-on, one that our Leather and The Circular Economy section has been interested in from the beginning of the series in 2020. From now on, the law says, procurement teams spending public money on behalf of public bodies must invest in products made from materials that support the idea of putting waste to good use.

Waste, in the legal text, is any material that the person or entity that generates it intends to get rid of. This definition works for hides. The text then says that recycling this waste includes any recovery operation by which “waste, including organic waste, is reprocessed into substances, materials or products for the purposes of their initial function or for other purposes”. This definition also works for leather.

Under the law, any article of footwear that public procurement teams buy must have a minimum of 20% of recycled fibres in its material mix. Furniture must have 20%. Car seats must have 20%. There is a powerful message here that leather industry leaders must try to put across: investing in products made from leather can help the buyers stay on the right side of the new law.

Money talks

AGEC will impose financial penalties on companies that do not comply and there will be a ‘polluter pays’ policy. Something of particular interest to FFC and to specialists such as Maximilien Mauriès is that the government intends to use some of the money it collects in this way to subsidise repairs. It said owners of consumer electronics and of sports equipment would be able to benefit from these ‘repair funds’ from 2022. Before the end of this year, there will be a fund for shoe repairs, too. Paris-based footwear- and clothing-focused non-profit Refashion will manage this. Managing director of FFC, Michelle Guilloux-Bonnet, says the details of exactly how the repair fund will work are not in place yet. Her organisation’s member companies will contribute to it, but she says this will cause them no alarm as they have been paying for years to help fund recycling and waste management companies that handle shoes when consumers throw them away. 

FFC regards repairability’s higher profile as good news. In the months and years ahead, the organisation thinks this development could reduce consumer and brand confidence in non-leather shoes, the construction of which, in many cases, would test the skills of even an expert such as Mr Mauriès.

On the other hand, it says AGEC also gives shoe manufacturers an opportunity to display a strong commitment to responsible production and to product longevity. Another point FFC makes is that the new law includes provision for promoting pro-repair, anti-waste habits among consumers. It says there will be spending of more than €150 million between 2023 and 2028 to convince the public that it makes sense to make mending great again, especially if it is subsidised.

For Michelle Guilloux-Bonnet, it is only right for consumers to receive help and encouragement to break away from throwaway. But she believes footwear manufacturers will benefit too; the makers of all responsibly made, long-lasting products will benefit in the circular economy.

The makers of all long-lasting, repairable products are set to benefit when economies become genuinely circular.
Credit:  Micam

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