In March 2022, representatives of global footwear brands gathered with sustainability experts and other academic researchers on the MIT campus. The mission? To kick-start a discussion on addressing the waste produced by the footwear industry. An MIT research project arising from the Circular Shoe Systems Summit has now resulted in a white paper titled the Footwear Manifesto. The report is co-authored by Yuly Fuentes-Medel, as MIT’s Fabric Innovation Hub manager and now program director of textiles at MIT Climate Grand Challenges; Leslie Yan ’22, who majored in mechanical engineering and…
