Footwear brand elliott has launched what it deems to be the first ever climate-friendly sneaker.
The Danish brand launched last month on crowdfunding platform IndieGogo. Available in four styles, its shoes are made from sustainable materials: two sneakers are made from recycled canvas, one from vegan suede, and one from vegan leather.
According to elliott, one pair of its sneakers saves 1 metric tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions — the equivalent to 1,429 laundry washes.
“We are incredibly pleased to provide all the consumers out there who care deeply for the environment and fashion a new choice of footwear,” elliott founder and leader designer Mikkel Bang said in a press release. “In the past year we have researched and gone through numerous iterations of our collection. Now we are finally ready with a product born from a fundamental passion for climate and design.”
Sustainable Vegan Footwear Gains Traction
While vegan shoes have been made from materials like PU leather for years, it’s only recently that they’ve become more mainstream. Vegan footwear is a big market, representing 73 percent of fashion purchases according to a recent report by retail tech and data company Edited.
Footwear giant Adidas collaborated with sustainable English designer Stella McCartney last year to launch a vegan version of its iconic Stan Smiths shoe, which gained fans in celebrities like Madonna, Emma Thompson, and the tennis legend himself.
It wasn’t the first collaboration between the brands; Stella McCartney and Adidas launched a collection using recycled materials last summer. Earlier this year, Stella McCartney unveiled a new vegan 3D-printed shoe and announced a fully recyclable sneaker called the FuturecraftLOOP.
Reebok, another mainstay of the athletic footwear world, launched a sustainable sneaker made from corn and cotton last August. The shoe originally came with leather tags that were recently removed, making the latest version completely vegan.
Canadian fashion brand Call It Spring, a member of the industry-wide group the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, is certified carbon neutral, meaning it offsets carbon emissions with renewable energy. The company officially went vegan last month, citing rising consumer demand as the motivator.
You can pre-order elliott’s vegan shoes through IndieGoGo.
