Written by Hey. You know what all your friends need? To know that no matter what they do, they can’t help polluting the planet. Let’s learn how to bum everyone out about SHOES.
Here’s a stat for you: 24 billion pairs of shoes are made annually. There’s literally 8 billion of us. Math says that’s nearly 3 pairs for each of us. Wtf are we making more shoes for instead of going to the cobbler?!
Most sneakers are made with plastics in the sole, on the shoe itself and on the laces.
Wanna hear a joke? Ethylene vinyl acetate is a fossil fuel based polymer widely used in both the shoe industry for sneaker soles and in solar panels. Getting rid of fossil fuels with… fossil fuels.
Hello folks. This is the part where you give up.
My Shoes are Plastic… Then What?
Plastics become microplastics. Microplastics enter the water, the fish and therefore the foodchain.
There is no biome on Earth currently that is untouched by plastic. So any plastic on your feet runs the risk of breaking down and entering the foodchain and then doing a world tour because it’s here for the next thousand years.
Shoes alone account for 1.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, those dusty old crepes you have, it a sheg up the whole system – that’s Jamaican for ‘your shoes are killing us.’
Look. Having some nice kicks is fun and all but honestly, living supercedes that. At what point is enough enough?
Other Parts of the Shoe
Sneakers are a big problem. The average pair of sneakers can take up to 1,000 years to decompose in the landfill. Have you ever thrown out a pair of shoes? You can probably go and visit them at your neighbourhood dump and catch up on some memories.
Your shoes aren’t plastic? Then they are probably leather. Tearing the skin off a living being that probably liked having skin, to keep our shoe game ‘on point.’ Leather itself is a terrible industry because of the cattle who are a primary cause of methane emissions, and are being bred and maintained for their leather with feed that could go to hungry humans instead while the cows live in wildlife corridors free of human interference.
Cattle rearing is responsible for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions which means the leather derived from it is in part responsible for this.
Back in 2022 it was estimated that 430 million cows would be slaughtered annually by 2025. With 2025 just around the corner, how do we feel knowing we produce 430 million cow ghosts a year and do we feel the rippling echo of their death cries on some seismic level, affecting the whole in some small way, so subtle but so biting that we find ourselves bereft without being able to pinpoint it?
Or is that just me?
Fine, I care about the shoes I wear now. Now what?
Think about looking up brands of ethical and sustainable shoes. There are numerous lists out there showing the latest advancements.
Given that you wear them every day, investing in a good, durable, fairly priced set of shoes is a good investment to make.
If you have less money available than that then go to a secondhand store, collect a decent set of shoes in your size and find your nearest cobbler or shoe-maker and have them pimp it out for you. Knowing that leather is usually a first option for shoes this may be a bit of a challenge to make vegan but if your cobbler knows their stuff they may enjoy the challenge.
This may also be pricey however so what do?
Get secondhand shoes and replace the insole and give them a good clean. No one likes the idea of dealing with some stranger’s feet. You might be polluting but at least it’s not new.
And the whole situation really is that pathetic.
Final Joke
Something something ecological footprint!
Conclusion
The idea of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes may be a cute philosophical endeavour but in the end you’d probably only end up polluting the ground you walk on and become none-the-wiser. Spare us all the theatrics and maybe use that same walking energy to petition for change to our hyperconsumeristic capitalist realism into a realism that is not based on the absurd hallucination of infinite production and trend-chasing with no consequence. We are using up the planet, turning her hollow, squeezing every last drop out of her generous body in order to ‘Just do it.’ There is no greater meaning behind the deed. It gives status and helps with presentation but this is just a modern iteration of what humans have been doing since time immemorial. Presenting and status are not new. The death toll is.
Does it feel like an emergency yet? What did you wear on your feet today? Does it feel like an emergency yet?
About Us: Fastfrwrd is a project to use deep gamification to incentivise replicable ecological action and innovation with points which can be spent on a user-generated digital goods marketplace.
Source:
https://www.mewburn.com/news-insights/sustainable-shoes-fossil-fuels-are-so-last-year
Ethylene Vinyl Acetate
https://www.satra.com/bulletin/article.php?id=3061
https://snibbs.co/blogs/foot-safety/environmental-impact-of-shoes
Global Shoe Waste: The Environmental Impact of Footwear
Leather is bad for animals and the planet — but what if we made it in a lab?