After two weeks, more than 420,000 units of bacteria were found on the outside of the test shoes. Of that bacteria, 27% were deadly E. Coli virus. Also detected was Klebsiella pneumonia, which can cause pneumonia and wound and bloodstream infections and Serratia ficaria, which can lead to infection of the respiratory tract.

“The common occurrence (96 percent) of coliform and E. coli bacteria on the outside of the shoes indicates frequent contact with fecal material, which most likely originates from floors in public restrooms or contact with animal fecal material outdoors,” said Gerba. “Our study also indicated that bacteria can be tracked by shoes over a long distance into your home or personal space after the shoes were contaminated with bacteria.”

Even more disturbing to moms of little ones - 90 to 99% of bacteria found on the exterior of the shoes was transmitted to hard tile and carpet.

Any germs picked up by bare feet, knees and hands will then be transported to the crib at naptime.

To help keep these germs at bay, simply remove your shoes and leave them by the door when you get home. Frequent vacuuming and mopping will also help. The study also found simply washing the shoes eliminated more than 90% of germs.

If you aren’t comfortable asking your babysitter or guest to walk around in their bare feet or socks, there are many cute house slippers on the market (and several organic versions) that won’t leave anyone feeling awkward.

Photo credit: Creative Commons License, A.K. Photography on Flickr

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?

Especially for fashion and shoe addicts like us, this is quite a hard nut to crack! So at first, you try to ignore the issue. It’s just too hard to find a nice non-leather shoe, right? But your conscience doesn’t leave you alone. So you start to do some research.

Apparently leather, as often stated, is not just a slaughterhouse byproduct, it is a booming industry. Wearing leather shoes contributes to factory farms, slaughterhouses and a lifetime of suffering for the animal. The meat and leather industry is no friend of the environment either. According to a UN report from November ‘06, the livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to global warming and land and water degradation. Animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides cause serious water and land pollution.

The process of turning animal skins into leather shares all the environmental destruction of the meat industry: dangerous mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, cyanide-based oils and dyes, chrome and other damaging products are used. Also the tanning is an intensive chemical process that causes toxic waste.

Fashion, for us, should be fun, not cruel, nor harmful…so the decision not to wear leather then came quite easily.

But where to find stylish, high quality shoes without leather? Most non-leather shoes have a bad reputation: they are ‘unfashionable,’ from ‘poor quality’ and made with ‘cheap, exploited labor.’ Encountering ’stylish,’ ‘high quality’ shoes that are ‘completely animal-free’ and ‘handmade in Europe’ seems not so easy!

After a long and unfruitful search for vegan shoes according to our strict demands, we decided to explore the shoe sector ourselves and investigate the possibilities. Many shoe factories believed we were crazy… quality shoes without leather? Impossible!

But after a while we were blessed to meet a few Italian and Spanish, mostly very small and family-run shoe companies who decided to give us a chance. We encountered non-leather materials that have evolved so much: they are soft, durable, absorbing, and gentle to the environment! They had nothing to do with cheap, unbreathing plastic (pvc) that is also highly polluting to the environment. Those new materials could be used for elegant, high quality vegan shoes…and georgette was born!

We named our shoe store after our grandmother Georgette. She always was a true shoe addict. We were always playing dress-up in her fabulous pumps and sandals. Now, she is 80 years old and she still wears ‘over the top’ stiletto-heels in lots of different colors and patterns. Our friends and family were convinced our shoe-obsession was of a genetic kind. Hence the name.

With georgette, we aim to prove that wearing high-quality and chic footwear can easily be combined with a compassionate lifestyle. Together with small family-run companies in Italy and Spain, we work out exclusive collections that are made in the best non-leather and eco-friendly materials, like natural fabrics and luxurious Italian faux leathers. Super-stylish, animal-friendly and 100% sweatshop-free!”

Again the website is http://www.georgette.be and I can’t wait for them to start doing men’s shoes, too.

More Posts on Shoes:

Green Style Spotlight: TOMS Shoes

Green Footing Part 1: Much Ado about the Shoe

Why Can’t Every Product be Sustainable?

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.

Luckily for us, they persevered and created a small collection of fabrics and a couple of trims in warm, natural tones. Included in the organic collection are one each of gingham, terry, fleece, sheeting, sherpa, a plain herringbone, the herringbone check shown above, felt, gingham bias trim, and gingham “ruffle rac.”

While it’s a small collection, it’s a big step forward to see organic fabrics for home crafting that are affordably priced. I’m not knocking the high-end organic cotton home decorating fabrics like those made by Mod Green Pod and Oliveira Textiles. Those companies make beautiful fabrics. It’s just nice to see the spectrum of fabrics filling out with choices for a variety of projects and budgets.

Michael Miller Organics fabrics and trim are available from J. Caroline.

Related Resources:

• Earth-friendly choices for batting and stuffing.
• Online shop Near Sea Naturals.
• Hemp Linen and Twill from Earth Friendly Goods.
• Harmony Art Organic Design fabrics

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.

Reduce

Almost all purchases are placed in yellow plastic bags. In the olden days, the sales associates at Arensberg’s used to tie boxes with string so that the customer could simply carry the boxes out holding the string. A spool still sits on the front desk in case their is a shortage of bags, but it is rarely used.

Towards the end of my shoe selling career, I started asking customers if they would prefer their boxes tied. To my surprise, many opted out of using a plastic bag. They were fascinated by this archaic technique and appreciated the extra effort.

If employees began asking customers if they would prefer a bag or a tie, I think the store would use far fewer bags - helping the environment and their expenses.

Resole

I was baffeled by the amount of people who asked me to throw away perfectly good shoes. They would come in to buy new shoes because their sole had worn down, or worse - because a lace had snapped in two. Lordy Mae!

I think the Arensberg’s, as well as all Lawrence shoe stores, should put a highly visible sign at the front desk that advertises BKB leather (a local shoe repair shop) and be more open to letting people know that they can easily and inexpensively repair most worn down shoes.

Recycle

Each pair of shoes are shipped to Arensberg’s in large cardboard boxes. Each individual shoe box is filled with oodles of packaging and mutltiple wads of paper are stuffed into each shoe to maintain the shape. There’s also usually a cardboard divider between the two shoes and tissue paper wrapped around each shoe. Almost all of this packaging will be taken out of the box and thrown away

This store could greatly lower their impact by recycling the packaging that comes from each opened shoe box.

Revamp

I must give kudos to Arensberg’s for selling Timberland and Simple brand shoes - two companies that are use eco-friendly and recycled materials, and are working to change the sustainability of the shoe industry.

I think they could expand their eco-friendly shoe selection and make a special section of the store dedicated to lower impact shoes. In addition to providing customers with the option of going green, it would also raise awareness about the environmental impact of the shoe industry and what to look for when trying to avoid shoes with a large carbon footprint.

P.S. Here’s a fun tip: The inside of a banana peal is a great non-toxic alternative to shoe polish.

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.

Graph: The American Apparel & Footwear Association

And that’s not the half of it. Read this National Geographic Green Guide article to learn the true horrors behind the shoe industry.

Not only do your shoes affect your footprint, they significantly alter your carbon footprint as well. Oh my!

But many shoe brands are working to become more eco-friendly. Simple now uses sustainable materials such as organic cotton, water based glue, recycled car tires, and recycled plastic bottles when making their shoes.

Timberland is also making great strides to green their company along with the entire shoe industry. In addition to using organic and recycled materials in some of their shoes they also pay workers to complete 40 hours of community service each year. Also, all there shoe boxes now carry a “nutrition label” that tell the environmental impact of each shoe. The labels may not say where each of the materials came from our other important matters pertaining to each pair’s impact, but the intentions are still admirable. Chief executive of Timberland, Jeffry B. Swartz hopes that other brands will adopt similar labels so that customers will compare eco-impact when shopping for shoes.

Huzzah to those who are trying to establish a firm footing in the fight for sustainability, but for the most part the movement to green the shoe industry is still lacking sole.

Maybe what the shoe biz needs is a little help from the hip-hop world. After all, RUN DMC did wonders for Adidas and The Pack’s song “Vans” boosted the sales of the already successful skateshoe brand.

I’m strutting down the street in my eco-friendly kicks

I don’t like toxic runoff cause it makes the fishies sick.

What do you think?

No?

Fine. I’ll stick to blogging.

Stay tuned for the next installment — Green Footing Part Deux: Local Shoe Subdue (on Ecolocalizer)

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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