BEST FOOT FORWARD
Canadian company Native Shoes steps into future with launch of biodegradable sneaker
You go to slip on your favourite pair of old sneakers, only to realize that they are finished. Sporting holes in the toe and cracked soles, your beloved sneaks have paid their dues. The time has come for you to get rid of them.
But where do they go from here? It’s reported that, in the U.S. alone, 300 million pairs of shoes are thrown in the garbage each year. While several brands and retailers have introduced programs for disposing of shoes that are too worn for donation but can be torn apart and reused in other ways, many people still toss their old sneakers in the trash.
“The industry has made a lot of great strides toward better practices over the past few years,” says Michael Belgue, the creative director and vice-president of creative at Native Shoes.
Aware of this trend toward tossing, the Vancouver-based brand is looking to lessen the footprint of footwear waste in landfills.
Sad shoe fact: Rubber soles can take more than 80 years to break down, if they do at all.
To kick off its bid to become more sustainable, the company introduced its Remix Project program in 2018. “As part of the program, we collect and recycle worn-out Native Shoes,” Belgue says. “The unique composition of our shoes can be reground into a versatile material that is useful in the creation of seating and playground flooring.”
Customers can drop their shoes off at any Native Shoes store, or at several of the brand’s retail partners. Online, Zappos for Good also accepts shoes back, free of shipping charges.
And the Native Shoes team has taken their program one big step further with the release of a unisex footwear style that’s biodegradable, vegan friendly and can even go in your compost bin. It’s called The Plant Shoe.
“The Plant Shoe was inspired by Native Shoes’ mission to become 100 per cent life cycle managed by 2023,” Belgue says. “Sneakers are a complex product made with dozens of components, many being energy intensive to produce and do not break down in the environment. It was important for us to look at how we could design a shoe that would produce zero waste, looking at the shoe’s entire life cycle from start to finish.
“We were inspired to create something that wouldn’t need to be reused or recycled, but instead, generates zero waste. Something that was born from the earth and could go back into it.”
Belgue says the Native Shoes team went through two years of “extensive research and testing” of materials that ended up making The Plant Shoe come together.
It’s “the first 100 per cent biodegradable, entirely animal-free, plant-based sneaker,” Belgue says of the simple style.
The Plant Shoe retails for $250 (while supplies last) and is available in one colour, a soft natural off-white, with sizes ranging from men’s 8-13 and women’s 5-10. The sleek silhouette is crafted using a host of interesting natural materials including cork, sisal, organic linen, eucalyptus and pineapple husk.
The entire shoe is held together by olive oil-soaked jute thread and natural latex-based glue. The unique mix of materials helps to make the footwear fully biodegradable, Belgue says.
“The shoe has a consumer compostable end-life meaning that customers can put it in their green bin where it will break down at a faster rate via aerobic or commercial composting, due to pure Hevea latex’s ability to be completely broken down by the naturally occurring micro-organisms that actively replicate in a compost environment,” he says.
So, now you can feel a little bit better — and more green — when you go to replace those old, worn-out sneakers you’ve been wearing.