Alex Marquoin

Alex graduated from ESTIA in 2020 as a robotics engineer and completed a double degree in robotics and automation at the University of Salford. Alex has worked on the dismantling of textiles, shoes and bags, and developed a process for separating shoe uppers and soles. Alex is now head of R&D at CETIA, working on innovation issues around circularity for the textile and footwear industry.

Abstract

Re_SHOES is a million-euro project led by CETIA in partnership with 7 partners (marketer, dismantling workshop and eco-organization): Zalando, Groupe ERAM, Decathlon, Atelier des Matières, Revalorem, Re_Fashion and a luxury goods player.

Re_SHOES takes the form of an automated shoe dismantling demonstrator (post and pre consumers shoes). It separates soles from upper parts and sorts them by composition to recycle shoe materials.
This is achieved via 3 cells: a tear-off cell for separating glued assemblies (4 shoes/minute), a cutting cell for separating any type of assembly (2 shoes/minute) and a cell for sorting soles by composition.
Robotics, automation and artificial intelligence are at the heart of these cells, enabling the process to be adapted to the different specificities of each shoe. The tear-off and sorting cells are in the test phase, and production will start in the July 2023 at CETIA. The cutting cell is currently being manufactured and will be operational by the end of the year. Various developments are envisaged in order to widen the scope of footwear accepted as input for this demonstrator and to increase its output. A patent is also in the process of being filed.

Together, these cells will form a complete, intelligent and automated demonstrator for dismantling and sorting soles, in order to provide recyclers with a deposit for recycling. With this demonstrator, the project partners aim to close the footwear recycling loop by reusing recycled materials in their products, thereby reducing the carbon impact of the entire footwear life cycle.