Plastic jelly shoes—an undeniable mark of coolness from the 1990s—are back in vogue. But with plastic pollution and fossil fuel extraction threatening the environment and climate, people in 2023 are asking more of brands behind the shiny, colorful footwear.
Melissa, the original jelly shoemaker founded in Brazil in 1979, produces its iconic sandals using 100% clean and renewable energy. It also has a robust system to conserve and reuse water, and introduced new packaging in 2021 that’s fully recyclable using starch-based glue and water-based paint.
The brand even claims that its shoes—made of a proprietary polyvinyl chloride material dubbed Melflex—are 100% recyclable. But experts told Adweek that’s not likely to happen in practice in the United States. PVC isn’t recyclable through municipal recycling programs, and with only four brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S., the likelihood that they’ll find their way to the in-store take-back bin is very low.
The gap between what’s possible and what’s likely for worn-out jellies exposes a broader challenge facing the fashion industry as it struggles toward circularity. As brands do the complex work of reducing climate impact, communicating that work with sustainability-minded consumers is important.
But finding the right balance between what’s technically possible, what’s currently available given systemic constraints—and what’s compelling and exciting for consumers—is a delicate dance for marketers.
What does ‘recyclable’ mean in advertising?
To ensure that people aren’t being misled—or simply misunderstanding recyclability claims—the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has laid out a set of guidelines for brands making these claims, explained advertising lawyer Jeffrey Greenbaum, managing partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC and global chairman of the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance.
“If there’s important information that consumers need to know in order to prevent a claim from being misleading, that information has to accompany the claim, it has to be right there, and it has to be—as the FTC would say—’difficult to miss.’”
The FTC’s Green Guides state that “marketers should qualify recyclable claims when recycling facilities are not available to at least 60% of the consumers or communities where a product is sold.” Essentially, anything that’s labeled simply as “recyclable,” with no further explanation, should be able to go into the blue bin for most people, because that’s generally how consumers understand recyclability.