BETHANY DOWNER

FOUNDER, ONE STEP SHOE RECYCLING

BETHANY DOWNER can thank Cmdr. Chris Hadfield for inspiring One Step Shoe Recycling, her shoe-recycling project. As she was pursuing her dream of becoming an astronaut, the 23-year-old met Hadfield, who told her to do something that would stand out on her application to the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France. Downer was increasingly interested in sustainability, and his advice made her think about how she could make an impact in an area that hadn’t been tackled. She landed on footwear. “Not only do we overpurchase shoes,” she says, “but we also underuse them.” She started a program that has diverted 7,257 kilograms of footwear so far from landfills—and helped her earn a spot at ISU, where she’s bringing sustainability to space with her master’s thesis on reusable launch systems.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

“You may be only one family, but if everyone adopts the same mentality, it makes a difference. Little changes can be done with ease.”