Teva works to divert products from landfills with a new sandal recycling initiative

Teva, a division of Deckers Brands, announces TevaForever, a partnership with international recycling leader TerraCycle, dedicated to giving well-worn Teva sandals a new life. The recycling programme reinforces Teva’s commitment to reducing its environmental impact and keeping waste out of landfills.

Well-worn Teva sandals have a soul of their own, shaped by every wild adventure they’ve weathered. When they are ready to be retired, there has never been a great place to go—until now.

Through the TevaForever Recycling Programme, well-loved Teva sandals can be mailed to TerraCycle at no cost to the customer, diverting them from landfills so they can be recycled into something new. The brand’s long-term vision is to work towards solutions to one day fully close the loop by recycling old Teva sandals into new ones.

“The partnership with TerraCycle is a huge step forward in our ongoing commitment to minimise our brand’s environmental impact. The TevaForever Recycling Programme gives our fans an easy way to join the cause, knowing we will give their sandals new life,” says Anders Bergstrom, Vice President and General Manager of Teva. “We can’t do this without our fans, and I’m thrilled to see the impact we will make together.”

Participating in the programme is simple. Customers may visit Teva.com to sign up and download a prepaid shipping label to mail in their sandals to TerraCycle. The recycling leader will clean the sandals and separate materials to prepare for processing. The processed material will be used by manufacturers to make a number of new products including playgrounds, athletic fields, and track ground cover.

“Teva sandal owners can now take comfort in knowing that when their favourite pair of sandals finally wears out, they won’t experience any of the guilt that comes with throwing them away,” said TerraCycle CEO and Founder, Tom Szaky. “The TevaForever Recycling Programme offers consumers the opportunity to recycle their well-loved sandals whilst preserving the environment for generations to come.”

The partnership with TerraCycle is the latest in Teva’s ever-evolving commitment to reducing its environmental footprint. In addition to the brand’s 2020 sustainability initiative, in which Teva transitioned 100% of its iconic straps to recycled plastic using REPREVE yarn, the brand has achieved the following:

Since 2020, the brand has diverted over 40.2 million plastic bottles, equal to 755 tons of post-consumer plastic or 1,510,000 pounds of plastic, from landfills; Teva has reduced its overall water usage and worked with its supply chain partners to improve its water conservation efforts.

Since 2017, Teva has saved 348 million gallons of water, thanks to its packaging improvements, and reduced the total weight of packaging used by 4.1 million pounds.
All of the brand’s leather is sourced from tanneries certified by Leather Working Group; whose mission is to promote sustainable and appropriate environmental business practices within the leather industry. Teva also supports the Better Cotton Initiative, the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world.

Since 2020, the brand has also reduced approximately 6.6 million pounds of Greenhouse Gas Emission (eq. Carbon Dioxide), 2.3 billion litres of water (or 622 million gallons of water), and 56 million MJ of energy (or equivalent to 437,740 gallons of gasoline).

For over 35 years, Teva sandals have enabled people around the world with more freedom to experience life’s great adventures. In this next chapter, the brand is committed to improving its sustainable business practices so future generations are given the same opportunity to explore our planet for years to come.

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