It’s no secret that the fashion industry is one of the highest polluters on the planet. Here’s a fact that’s new though… the shoe industry pumps out more than 20 billion shoes each year, and virtually every single one of them has trace amounts of plastic in it. That’s not even considering the fact that for the most part, shoes are never biodegradable.
Couple the permanence of plastic with 20 billion and you’ve got a pretty deadly number on your hands. It’s easy to recycle cloth, but shoes, not so much. Since most shoes are made of multiple parts, featuring multiple materials glued together using synthetic glue, your footwear can’t be recycled or composted. The guys at WAES Footwear want to change at least one of those things. By engineering the plastic out of the footwear, WAES’ shoes look to nature and natural materials for inspiration. The shoes come in two variants featuring a certified organic canvas upper (the Hope) and an organic, tanned leather upper (the Chameleon), bound together using conifer glue and twine made from hemp, cotton, and flax; with an insole and outsole made from Lactae Hevea, or tree sap. WAES’ shoes are manufactured in Portugal and every element of the shoe is natural or nature-derived, and is biodegradable, including the shoe’s innovative packaging which is made from reusable wooden port-wine boxes!
One would probably think the absence of plastic would present some compromises, but nature has its way of providing better alternatives, says Ed Temperley, co-founder of WAES. The Lactae Hevea sole is, in fact, more durable and at the same time more flexible than plastic or synthetic elastomer soles, while the upper fabric and laces present a classic evergreen silhouette.
The regular shoes you wear may eventually end up in a landfill, but even a decade of wearing them results in sole abrasion, which causes plastic microparticles to enter the ground and atmosphere. By ditching the very use of synthetic polymers, WAES’ shoes have a significantly lower impact on the environment, and they biodegrade naturally, creating less waste in the long run… and for each shoe bought, the fine people at WAES pledge to plant a mangrove tree to help restore marine ecosystems!
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