Revolutionary German start-up striding toward plastic-free running shoe

Hundreds of thousands of tons of plastics from clothing end up in the world's oceans every year. A large chunk of that comes from sportswear. So a German start-up has been developing designs for athletic wear that ditch plastic in favor of biodegradable, compostable materials.

Berlin-based sportswear brand Winqs is looking to revolutionize the materials used in a market valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars globally.

The company co-Founder and CEO Jan Kratochvil opened up to CGTN Europe about his company's grand ambitions.

"It is our mission to put all the legacy brands under some kind of pressure that they change the way they do business," he said. "We try to approach it by educating people so that they can read better what's actually happening so that they understand how materials work, how circularity works, how transparency can look like because they didn't see it before so far. 

"Transparency meant I know from what country this product is coming from. But if you take one of our products, you can scan the QR code, you have it on your phone, exactly what factory it's coming from, what materials were used and what certificates the product received."

The company was founded by Jan and his business partner, Marek. The two were top floorball players in the German Bundesliga. Popular in Scandinavia and Central Europe, the sport is like a version of field hockey played indoors.

Their line of sportswear is offering alternative materials to plastics. Kratochvil told our team why their choice was a real replacement for petroleum-based plastics.

"One is totally compostable because that's eucalyptus-based material, and that's something that you give back to the earth," Kratochvil added. "You don't have to burn it. The other material we have is a material called polylactate, which is made from corn waste or sugarcane. 

"We also have our own infrastructure for so-called molecular recycling. Once this material is done, we put it back into this into this process, and it can be recycled into the same material without any loss of quality. It's a huge difference to polyester because once polyester is worn out, it ends up on the landfill or you have to burn it. There's no other solution."

READ MORE

What we know about the Israel-Hamas truce deal

German police raid pro-Palestinian and far right properties

Sweden threatens to deport law-breaking immigrants

With the goal of shaking up the sportswear industry, the Berlin-based brand has taken on the biggest in the world.

In doing so, Winqs has been recognized within the industry, picking up a growing collection of prestigious awards, including a couple of ISPO gongs, regarded as the seal of approval for outstanding products and services in sports.

Sportswear giants like Nike and Adidas have all made inroads in making their products carbon-neutral or plastic-free. Germany's Adidas released football shirts made from recycled ocean plastic for Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

The top 10 clubs worldwide sold more than 18 million shirts in 2021. Seven million of those were bought by Real and Bayern fans.

While Winqs has its HQ in Germany, much of the materials come from Asia, and the company has a production facility in China. For Jan and his team, their next finish line is to create a running shoe that contains no plastic at all.

Subscribe to Storyboard: A weekly newsletter bringing you the best of CGTN every Friday