Key Points

  • In 2025, Soles4Souls diverted 5.9 million pairs of shoes and 3 million items of clothing from landfill channels.
  • This year it acquired Dutch refurbishment company Erren Recondition and is planning a roughly 300,000-square-foot workshop within its existing Alabama facility.
  • The EU has introduced regulations banning the destruction of unsold goods, and the organization sees reconditioning as an entry point for meeting brand demand.

Roughly 23 billion pairs of shoes are produced globally each year, and more than 300 million of them end up in landfills. The nonprofit Soles4Souls has spent 20 years collecting shoe and clothing donations and channeling items into reuse: some new goods go to donations helping people in difficult circumstances such as the homeless and victims of natural disasters; others are shipped to low-income countries, creating business opportunities for local entrepreneurs in clothing resale. In 2025, the organization diverted 5.9 million pairs of shoes and 3 million items of clothing from waste disposal pathways.

Building on its existing operations, Soles4Souls has set its sights on repair and reconditioning, and to that end acquired the Dutch company Erren Recondition this year. The company specializes in restoring goods, with services covering mold removal, cleaning, repair and repackaging. Soles4Souls President and CEO Buddy Teaster calls it a "magician" that can turn fashion products that appear to have reached the end of their life back into usable goods.

In the past, repair and donation were two separate processes, often creating a logistics dilemma for brands: if products sent for repair fail to meet retail standards, redirecting them to other channels often means extra shipping or disposal costs. Soles4Souls combines commercial repair services with its own donation network, building a "one-stop shop" within its circular platform Solutions4Good, making it easier for brands to extract value from inventory whether they go the retail, resale or donation route. Teaster and Erren Recondition's Peter Erren met in 2017. Teaster says what attracted Soles4Souls was not just the expertise, but Peter's personal commitment to sustainability and other parts of the organization's mission, which made the key difference.

Previously Solutions4Good mainly did sorting and grading. Now Soles4Souls is bringing Erren's capabilities to the US: designing and building a roughly 300,000-square-foot workshop within its existing facility in Alabama. Operations are handled by two dedicated Solutions4Good staff, with Erren managing and training them, and Michael Brown, the longtime head of the Alabama facility, providing additional oversight. Scaling the reconditioning business in the US will take time, but processes such as mold removal, washing, odor removal and pressing are expected to be up and running soon, and several client projects have already been completed.

As with the donation business, brands decide where goods go after repair. Some items can reach A-grade inventory standards and return to retail shelves; new goods in good condition can also be donated; and brands can also direct products to the organization's 4Opportunity entrepreneurship support program. Whichever channel is chosen, Soles4Souls tries to shorten shipping distances as much as possible—for example, goods donated to 4Opportunity within the US may go to entrepreneurs in Central America and the Caribbean. For goods truly unsuitable for any channel, the organization partners with a waste-to-energy producer near its Alabama facility to convert them into fuel, using them as a resource rather than sending them to landfill.

Other US companies also offer repair services, but Teaster believes Soles4Souls' broader mission is its differentiator. By working with Solutions4Good, brands gain feedback on the impact of their goods and can then tell that story externally. Expanding into commercial services also supports the organization's mission: as outlets and the resale market increasingly compete for secondhand goods, new revenue can feed back into the mission, while repair services give the organization access to a broader pool of fashion goods and let it serve more people. Teaster says this changes the content of its conversations with brands, and he hopes to first earn trust and prove capability, then let partnerships create a bigger impact than brands imagine.

This investment comes as the industry faces more criticism over where unsold goods end up. Some brands have sparked public backlash for destroying merchandise, and this is now a legal issue—the EU is introducing legislation banning the destruction of unsold goods. Teaster acknowledges that some companies have changed their practices, but Soles4Souls recently still witnessed a company choosing destruction over donation. He says there remains a large gap between long-established habits and practices and the new legal framework: something clearly won't be used, yet it wasn't donated to them or to anyone else, and no one benefited from it. That pains him, and there is still a lot of work to do.

Source: How Soles4Souls’ Extension into Reconditioning Creates a ‘One-Stop Shop’ for Circularity · Originally published 2026-09-29