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We Don't Have Time

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Icebug: “We have started a new era of radical transparency”

PARTNER UPDATE. Icebug is the world’s first footwear brand to openly declare the climate footprint for all its shoes. It was also the first footwear brand to be declared climate positive by the UN.
Now the Swedish shoemaker has teamed up with We Don’t Have Time to spread the word – and to get ideas on how to further reduce its emissions.
It was after seeing yet another disheartening media report on Earth Overshoot day some ten years ago that Icebug founder David Ekelund decided he needed to change his business model.
”It just became so strikingly clear that business as usual was a disaster, and that we needed to do something about it”, he says.
It was tough at first. The company was still fighting to stay afloat, and David Ekelund doubted if a small brand like Icebug really could make a difference.
But the company took it step by step, one material at the time. Started replacing virgin material with recycled ones, and began experimenting with alternative ways of dyeing fabrics.
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”We believe that there is a lot we can learn from others to further reduce our emissions. In the race to zero, we all win by everybody increasing speed”, says David Ekelund, CEO and founder of Icebug.

Today, all the textile materials Icebug uses for the new collections are either recycled, dyed with low-impact methods or Bluesign certified. In many cases the textiles are all of those, and when not, it’s mainly due to minimum quantity issues. According to the company´s own calculations, the carbon footprint for an Icebug shoe is now up to 35% lower than a standard running shoe from other manufacturers.
One of the remaining challenges is how to phase out oil in the production of outsoles.
”We tried using 100 percent natural rubber, but it had a bad effect on the quality of the sole. When mixing the rubber with ten percent oil-based synthetic rubber, we managed to increase the durability by 30 percent”, says David Ekelund.
In 2018, after having experienced the hottest summer ever recorded in Sweden, David Ekelund and his colleagues decided to take Icebug’s climate work one step further, by offsetting all its remaining emissions.
”Once we figured out a way to measure our carbon footprint it was really easy, and much cheaper than we expected it to be. We did our offsetting via UNFCCC, and it didn’t even cost us five kronor (about fifty cent euro) per shoe. We decided to offset 200 percent of our emissions, and to show we were serious about it we included all our emissions from 2001, when the company was founded.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_dNmE3oBK0


After a while the UNFCCC got back to Icebug, informing them that the company was now the world’s first climate-positive footwear brand, and that UNFCCC wanted to recognize it on their Climate Neutral Now platform.
But this was by no mean the final destination for Icebug – just the start of a new circle of measuring, reducing and then finally offsetting the unavoidable emission, improving each time. Since then, Icebug has spent a lot of effort to make more detailed and exact footprint calculations. In February this year, Icebug became the first performance footwear brand to share the climate footprint on all shoes.
When scanning the QR code on a shoebox for a pair of Icebug runners, the customer will not only get information on the carbon footprint and the percentage of recycled and bio-based materials for each shoe, but also access to the full supply-chain data, including in which factories the shoes and materials are made.
”This is a new era of radical transparency in the shoe business”, says David Ekelund. ”We now urge other footwear brands to share their sustainability data, and especially the products' CO2 footprint.”
There are two things Icebug hopes to achieve by sharing all this data. One is to provide a sort of blueprint for other footwear brands who want to become more sustainable, and challenge those that claim they are to prove that they walk the talk. The other is to increase customer knowledge.
”We want every customer to start asking three questions to their favorite brands. What is your climate footprint? What actions are you taking to shrink it? And how do you take care of your remaining emissions?”
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Read more about Icebug's Follow the Footprints transparency work.

You have put a lot of work and money into making your shoes more sustainable. Is it starting to pay off?
”We are beginning to see some competitive advantages. In recent years we have seen a stronger demand for sustainable products, and there are now retailers who are actively driving this transition.”
Why have Icebug decided to partner with We Don’t Have Time?
”The main reason is that we want to create as much impact as possible. The fourth pillar of climate action, influencing society, is very important to us. If no one knows what we are doing, we miss the opportunity to drive change. We view this partnership as a way of reaching out, and to spread solutions.”
How are you planning to use your Climate Dialogue page?
”We want to get climate ideas, for example on what steps we could take to further phase out oil in the production of soles. Maybe there’s a small entrepreneur out there with a great solution that we could help to scale.”
By MARKUS LUTTEMAN
Climate Communicator at We Don't Have Time

FACT BOX
Icebug AB was founded in Goteborg Sweden, in 2001.
 It is still owner-operated (no venture capital or multinational owners)
Total sales 2020: $20M (projected 2021: $30M)

Number of employees: 35

Total emissions 2020: 2,955 tonnes CO2e (6,000 tonnes CO2e offset)
Icebug is a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, to increase transparency also regarding fair working conditions in the factories they cooperate with.
Learn more about how Icebug calculates the climate impact of its products.
  • Muhammad Fahd Khan

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    200 w

    This is great work, commitment and an exceptional example that @IceBug has set. There is a lesson for every big brand in it,

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    We need to stop methane and #BuyMoreTime