Next time please don't through away your old shoes!! It can be recycled

A new recycling system has been developed for shoes by the Scientists of Loughborough University,UK. So next time please don't throw away your shoes :D 

It was developed at the University's innovative manufacturing and construction centre. So how does this work? The process starts initially by manually sorting the shoes into different categories. This is done in order to remove the metal components from the shoes. Then they are automatically shredded and granulated which ends up in tiny fragments. These fragments are sorted based on three main methods. 1)Cyclonic separation 2) Zig zag separation and 3) Vibrating tablets. 

During the cyclonic separation process, a tornado-like vortex of air is created with an enclosed cylindrical chamber. The lightest fragments are picked up by the vortex and carried out of the chamber through an outlet tube in the top, while heavier ones remain behind at the bottom. During the zig zag process, the fragments are fed into the top of an enclosed column, which will fall to the bottom. it happens in a zig zag manner between sloping platforms. During this process jets of air are blown from the sides which helps the heavier to settle down and lighter fragments to move to the next receptacles. Finally the mixed fragments are placed on a screen built into a vibrating table, the vibrations cause smaller fragments to fall through the gaps in the screen, with the larger ones remaining on top. By the time they get into the end, the shoe fragments are sorted into four material types such as leather, foam, rubber and other materials which can be used for the preparation of other materials. 

The university have started working with major footwear manufactures to develop methods of designing footwear that is ecofriendly and recyclable.