Evaluation of environmental effect of pump shoes in terms of manufacturing process

China is the largest footwear producing country, as well as the largest country producing the footwear manufacturing waste. In order to achieve sustainable development in the footwear industry, we should pay attention to their environmental effect seriously. Therefore, by applying life-cycle assessment (LCA) protocol, we aimed to explore the effect of the manufacturing process on the environment of a classical style of pump shoes. Following guidelines of ISO 14010, we first determined the objective and the scope of this study; then, we collected input and output data from the shoe producing line of a shoe-making enterprise in Wenzhou, China; afterwards, we applied eFootprint software for LCA modeling; finally, we chose three LCA indicators for further analysis: Global Warming Potential (GWP, kg CO2 eq), Primary Energy Demand (PED, MJ) and Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP, kg Sb eq). Our results show that by producing one pair of pump shoes, the manufacturing process will emit 11.427 Kg CO2 eq in terms of GWP, 232.621MJ in PED and 6.291×10-5Kg sb eq in ADP. Hence, by multiplying the number of shoes produced in China, negative environmental influences from shoe making industry were also dramatic. According to further contribution rate of all process, we found that materials such as the water-based binder and the plastic last used in manufacturing process accounted for the major reason. Overall, while considering the environmental effects from the shoe manufacturing process, we shall not ignore the environmental impact whilst producing the binder and the last. Moreover, by reducing binder usage or updating the shoe making technology, and recycling the last can be an efficient way to reduce the environmental effects from the shoe making industry.