30+ Ethical & Sustainable Shoes Brands for Every Season (for Her, Him & Kids)

If you are a fashionista, we’d recommend you highly to develop a love for ethically made & sustainable shoes. 

As the ongoing trends of producing low quality apparel increase, so does the real impact of fast fashion. And it not only affects the environment by sending more and more of these 1-off-seasonal pairs of shoes. The shoe industry also takes part in sweatshop labor, not to mention the incredibly hazardous production processes that are involved  in the manufacturing of footwear.

Let’s take a quick look at the current snapshot of the social and environmental impact of shoes that are made under fast fashion standards.

What is the environmental impact of fast fashion shoes?

• It takes up to 40 years for a shoe to start to decompose in landfill.
• We send an average of 3x pairs of shoes per person to landfill every year. 
• From 1990 to 2004, worldwide footwear production has increased by 70% to around 17 billion pairs of shoes. Experts say that the global footwear industry will be worth more than 95 billion dollars by 2025.
• Western Europe & United States alone consume 2 billion pairs of shoes/year. 
• In the UK, more than 330 million pairs of shoes, with a total market value of more than £5 billion are consumed every year. 

Source

What is the social impact of fast fashion shoes?

The excess of footwear consumption alongside the way modern footwear is manufactured, fast fashion shoes also carries consequences from the social standpoint.

Facts are that traditional shoe-crafting has been replaced with this way of mass producing footwear. Unfortunately, this leads to a loss of craftsmanship and its (sometimes) ancient techniques. Ultimately has a huge effect on the preservation of the native art and culture among communities. 

Most often, young people also abandon their hometowns and move to larger cities seeking for paid jobs. This not only has an impact on elderly who are left behind, but also contributes to ghost rural areas.

On the other hand, we have the modern slavery issue for which the whole fast fashion industry is often tarnished with. In the quest for cheaper and faster production of the shoes or apparel, factories enforce vulnerable workers with long hours journeys in exchange for a very low pay – not to mention the dangerous working conditions the workforce is exposed to.

The lack of safety for workers in factories becomes very obvious for the poor security measures & working standards. Some examples are damaged facilities, as well as the poorly maintained equipment and the absence of trained workers to use the machinery. 

Remember the collapse of Rana Plaza, back in 2013? Here 1100 workers lost their lives due to the poor and unsafe working conditions – making it one of the worst industrial tragedies in modern history.

Furthermore workers are often exposed to the handling of chemicals that lead to severe health issues. For example, people who work in tanneries processing leather (a very typical material used in shoes), they risk severe side-effects from exposure to these toxic substances. Acute effects include irritation to the mouth, airways and eyes; skin reactions; digestive problems, kidney or liver damage; lung damage; long-term cancer and reproductive problems. This could be prevented by providing factory workers with protective equipment such as masks, gloves, or adequate ventilation.