Post-Industrial vs Post-Consumer Recycled: What Is the Difference?

Recycled content comes from one of two places. The Federal Trade Commission's Green Guides define it as material recovered or diverted from the waste stream either during the manufacturing process, which is pre-consumer, or after consumer use, which is post-consumer. Post-industrial is another name for pre-consumer.

Post-consumer material has been used. A plastic bottle that is collected, processed and turned into fabric is post-consumer. Post-industrial material never reached a customer. It is the scrap left over from making something else.

In footwear, the post-industrial stream is large. Blumaka, which makes our foam, reports that up to 50% of the foam produced for footwear is scrapped during manufacturing, and that the waste adds up to more than 5 billion insoles' worth of foam each year.

Used shoes are harder to recycle. MIT researchers counted 65 discrete parts and more than 360 manufacturing steps in a typical pair of running shoes. Those parts are glued and stitched together, which makes them difficult to separate into clean material. Factory foam scrap is a single material that has never been worn.

The midsole and insole in every MACAW are post-industrial. They are Blumaka foam, up to 85% recycled performance foam by volume, made from running shoe production waste. It is manufacturing scrap, not used shoes.

The Green Guides also say that a company claiming pre-consumer content should be able to show that the material would otherwise have entered the waste stream. Blumaka's recycled content is certified to the Global Recycled Standard, an independent chain-of-custody standard.

Our claim is post-industrial foam, up to 85% by volume, in the midsole and insole.

Blumaka midsole and insole, up to 85% recycled performance foam. Designed in Costa Mesa, assembled by hand at DMG in Santiago, Dominican Republic.