BYU grad turns Nike scraps into NBA-quality sneakers

PROVO — Everybody has leftovers. But rather than mix them with cream of chicken soup and sprinkle Corn Flakes on top, creative designer Kasey Jarvis turned Nike scraps into NBA-level basketball shoes.

The BYU industrial design graduate returned to campus Thursday night to share the story of Trash Talk, the sneaker company's first "recycled" shoe.

The project began several years ago when Jarvis got a glimpse of the giant piles of scraps outside one of Nike's manufacturing plants in Vietnam.

"It was pretty overpowering, shocking to see how much waste there is," he said. "When you outsource your manufacturing, you're outsourcing your pollution. You usually think about one but don't think too much about the other."

After that trip, he began to brainstorm a way to make shoes from the scraps.

Using food metaphors, his team first tried the meatloaf approach — grind up all the leftovers and create a shoe from the composite.

A good idea, but difficult to do because the coatings on individual components prevented them from meshing well.

So, they tried the casserole approach, with individual scraps machine-stitched together to make a new shoe.

"Once we were pursuing this path, making shoes from garbage, essentially garbage, it really threw people for a loop inside Nike," Jarvis said.

Some thought the recycled shoes could only be sold in discount stores while others envisioned instant appeal in the high-end sneaker boutiques.

And the shoe is a popular seller now, especially since supporter Steve Nash wore his own pair of Trash Talks in the 2008 All-Star Game, Jarvis said.

In fact, Nash is now wearing Trash Talk II, while Trash Talk III is slated to come out this spring, Jarvis said.

Besides being environmentally friendly, these shoes also can withstand the beatings from NBA stars like Nash, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, who have been known to shred lesser shoes, Jarvis said.

It takes eight regular pairs of shoes to have enough scraps to make one pair of Trash Talks, Jarvis said, although both regular and recycled share a similar profit margin, due to the intense labor required.

When Jarvis left the basketball division to go into designing running shoes, he was sure Trash Talk would die.

"So I've been really excited to see the basketball category has kept doing it," Jarvis said. "(We're still) coming up with innovations to go even beyond this."

For more information visit www.nikebiz.com/media/pr/2008/02/13_Nash.html.

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