Shoes with five visits at the shoe repairer included in the price. Note the punch ticket under the shoe. Photo: People People.
In a world where very few things are made to last, I was happy to read about shoes that come with a built-in punch ticket for five services at a shoe-repair shop.
Now Shoes with a cause don’t really exist, since they are (still) an idea made up by designers at Swedish People People. They read a report about the sometimes extremely dirty business of leather industries, written by the organisation Swedwatch . This led to the idea of designing shoes that say goodbye to the wear-and-throw tradition.
Or, as one of the brains behind the shoes, Per Brickstad, puts it when I call him to ask a bit more:
– We want to design sustainable things that don’t necessarily look like most sustainable things do, for people who don’t care a shit about sustainable development.
A way to fool people into acting right? Well, why not.
According to a new report each Swede throws about eight kilos of clothes in the garbage every year. Supposedly much of these clothes could be used by someone else. Another aspect of this is the resources that are used to make clothes. For example it takes about 11000 litres of water to produce a pair of jeans.
Photo: Ola Lindberg/Flickr.