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Editor’s note: Leather hasn’t come under quite the scrutiny of other animal products like fur, but our friends at Life Goggles ask a good question today: should an environmentalist wear the stuff? To answer the question, LG blogger Adam interviews Katleen Baum of georgette, a Belgian store that specializes in “animal friendly footwear.” This post was originally published on Thursday, May 8, 2008.
Katleen Baum and her twin sister Liesbet run georgette, an online and real world shop in Antwerp which specializes in animal friendly footwear. The website is a delight. Handily written in English, you navigate with a flea circus and clicking on a link can give you a nice surprise. Oh, and the shoes are great too. Katleen spoke to Life Goggles about reconciling veganism with wearing leather.
“Ever since we were kids, we were always fascinated with fashion and shoes. And also with animals. From the moment we realized that the animal we saw in the country, ended up on our dinner plates, we did not want to eat it anymore. So we became vegetarian and evolved to veganism. No biggie, right? But as time progresses, you start to question other things…
Every vegetarian or vegan, some day, will be confronted with the same dilemma: how to reconcile a strict vegetarian-vegan diet with wearing leather?
By Skye Kilaen •
April 29, 2008
Michael Miller Fabrics is co-sponsoring a Baby Bootie contest with Craft Magazine. I would love to see a green crafter win this with organic or recycled materials.
I do suspect there’s some kind of craft hive mind episode going on here, because I’ve planned to write about their organic fabric line this week - and just last week, Autumn posted here at Crafting A Green World about recycled handmade shoes. I fully intend to investigate this set of coincidences, but first let’s talk about Michael Miller Organics.
Michael Miller Fabrics launched its organic line at the beginning of the year. The sneak peek on their blog last fall included a shot of the supercute booties shown here. That blog post gave a snapshot of some of the challenges facing folks who want to bring organic cotton to market:
Did you know that organic cotton has to be grown for at least three years without chemical pesticides, defoliants, or fertilizers? It costs more because organic farms are more labor and management intensive. They’re also usually smaller and do not receive federal subsidies like conventional farming.
Editor’s note: On Monday, we published the first part of Travis Brown’s “Green Footing” series on sustainablog. As part II (or “deux”) focuses on “green footing” in Lawrence, KS, it seemed fitting for Ecolocalizer. Travis is a student in Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas, and originally published this post to the course blog on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.
On Monday, I took a broad look at America’s shoe problem.
Now I’d like to take things down a notch and look at the shoe bid’ness on the local level.
Arensberg’s Shoes has been operating in Lawrence since 1956. The family-owned store sells about 8,000 shoes a year.
I worked as a sales associate at Arensberg’s for 11 months. I have the utmost respect for the store and the management. They are the only shoe store that I have ever been to where the employees genuinely care about the health, comfort and satisfaction of their customers. However, I think the business could make simple changes that would significantly alter their environmental impact.
Editor’s note: We all know shoes leave a footprint, but probably haven’t given much thought to the environmental footprint created by shoe manufacturing. Travis Brown, a student in Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas, takes a look at the impact of what we put on our feet. This post was originally published to the course blog on Monday, March 10, 2008, and on Triplepundit on Thursday, March 13, 2008.
America has a shoe problem.
2,286,472,000 shoes were purchased in the U.S. in 2005 according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association. There were 297,821,175 Americans alive at the end of 2005. That’s 7.67 shoes per person. Now I realize that I am a man and therefore do not understand the true glory of shoes, but this seems a little absurd. Think of all the different materials that go into making shoes and their packaging. Think of all the different places that those materials come from. Then think of where the shoes are made and how far they travel. In 2005, only 1.4% of consumed shoes were manufactured in America. 84.2% of American bought shoes that were made in China.
Just take a gander at this trend throughout the past few decades.
After the big hype made over the slave labor Nike used to produce its ever-famous sneakers, the source of footwear has gotten as much attention as the clothing we wear. With the weather warming quicker than ever before (you know, that global warming myth-thing), summer is right around the corner; time to break out the seasonal footwear! Hand-made in the Northern countryside of Thailand, Chabah makes very stylish sandals for men and women:
Chabah
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There are some fashion traditions that just aren't comfortable (i.e. corsets), but one classic Argentinian-style shoe is helping to reshape the future for thousands of kids. With all the press out there on Toms Shoes, I'm pretty sure you have heard of them before. If not, here's the gist: buy a pair of affordable, comfortable Toms Shoes and a child in South America no only gets a free pair of […]
