Eric Ravenscraft
Most of your shoes are made of petroleum-based rubber or leather. These shoes from Reebok are not. They’re made of corn. And some cotton.
Almost all of your food and a lot of non-food products are already made out of corn. Your shoes, meanwhile, are made out of materials that are generally worse for the environment than corn, like petroleum and leather. To make its shoes more green—and presumably sell more shoes to people who prefer green products—the company is making it shoes out of corn and cotton.
The base and insole of the shoe are made using various corn-based production techniques, while the fabric tops of the shoes are woven out of organic cotton. No dyes are used, so like usual, if you want to go green, expect to look brown.
The shoes are designed to be made “from things that grow” so that the materials involved are renewable and compostable, which should have less of a long-term environmental impact than the shoes you’re used to today.
If you want to reduce your impact on the environment, though, it won’t come cheap. At $95, these shoes aren’t the most expensive you can get, but they’re more expensive than the bargain bin $20 shoes you can grab in a pinch, either. Still, those somewhat more expensive shoes will not only last you longer (probably), but they’ll be better for the environment long term. Call it the Corn Boots Theory of Environmental Injustice.
Source: Reebok via Digital Trends
