Heads, up hippies: something you’ll definitely go ahead and purchase. Canada-based Native Shoes has released a pair of unisex sneakers made entirely from vegan-friendly materials. The aptly named Plant Shoe cull from eucalyptus, pineapple husk, and dried hevea milk.
Native Shoes wants to offer customers footwear that’s not just stylish and high-quality, but is also zero-waste. So they designed trainers featuring plant-derived components. That means these kicks are fully biodegradable, compostable, and most importantly, free from animal products. It’s not everyday you can say that about shoes.
The company says in the United States alone, people throw at least 300 million pairs of sneakers each year. Most of those kicks end up in landfill. Sneakers are the worst culprit of waste since they’re made of (mostly) plastic or chemically treated materials. They are impossible to break down, worse yet.
As such, Native Shoes took natural materials like organic cotton, olive oil, linen, cork, and kenaf to construct the Plant Shoe. These kicks are able to break down naturally over a comparatively short amount of time. In other words, they reduce the potential for adding more waste.
The outsole is natural latex hevea milk, which comes from the tropical hevea tree, also called the rubber tree. There are no fillers or petrochemical catalysts, which are typically common in other rubber materials.
Once they become too worn out to wear, customers can put the sneakers in their green bins. There, the Plant Shoe will break down at a faster rate thanks to aerobic or commercial composting. More info if you click the link below.
Photos courtesy of Native Shoes