Food for thought: the sneaker industry produces over 15 billion pairs of sneakers a year! That's a lot of animal skin, rubber, glue, and plastics manufactured and fossil fuels burned to make your favorite pairs of kicks. As climate change becomes more and more of a priority and trash piles continue to grow higher, it's time to examine our role in the mission for change. On this episode of From the Ground Up we are taking a deep dive into sustainability and how it is impacting the sneaker industry.

On this episode, we sit down with Paul Gaudio, the global creative director of adidas, to look at recent changes the brand has made to become more sustainable with adidas parley, and the mission behind "adidas speedfactory," a completely automated factory designed quickly produce limited runs of customizable products.

Next up, we play a game called "killing the game," a three round sneaker trivia focused on sustainability. Guests Rebecca Francios and Jameer Pond answer tough questions about sneaker creation like "what is the worst sneaker material for the environment?" and "how much water does it take to make a pair of leather shoes?" The answer's may surprise you.

To conclude this episode, Pete Forester is on location at Allbirds, a sustainable sneaker brand startup based in San Francisco. We catch up with founder and co-CEO Joey Zwillinger at the brands first Soho store opening to discuss why they decided to start a sustainable sneaker brand, how they turned wool and eucalyptus into must have sneakers, and more.

Learn more about how sustainability the full episode of From the Ground Up in the video above.

After, watch our previous episode of ‘From the Ground Up’ on how you can build your very own sneaker collection.