How Allbirds Made a Shoe Designed to Help Other Companies Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

Allbirds is getting serious about going to zero. The San Francisco-based apparel company known for wool sneakers that have become a staple among startup founders and investors created a net zero carbon shoe--meaning the sourcing and manufacturing required to produce the shoes don't add any carbon to the environment. Dubbed the Moonshot--or M0.0NSHOT, as Allbirds named it to emphasize the 0.0 carbon emissions--the shoe registers a net zero carbon footprint without utilizing any offsets, such as carbon credits. Allbirds bills the Moonshot as the world's first net zero carbon shoe, but Allbirds co-founder and co-CEO Tim Brown hopes other brands follow suit. His goal is to inspire other entrepreneurs to lower their companies' carbon emissions using the same methods. The Moonshot took more than two years to develop and will be unveiled in June 2023 at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen before hitting stores in early 2024. This new shoe represents more than a product launch. The Moonshot is a key part of Allbirds' strategy to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2025 and near net zero by 2030, targets that Brown says the company is on track to reach. The co-founder wants this to become the eventual standard for all of the brand's clothing and shoes. While Allbirds eschews logos, the company has been labeling all of its products with their respective carbon footprints since 2020. Brown likened those stamps, including the "0.0" imprinted on the Moonshot, to the nutrition labels that consumers can find on any package of food at the grocery store.