What We Love About These Sustainable Shoes

The creators of Fortress shoes were first introduced to the handcrafted footwear of Peru in 2004, during a backpacking trip through South America. They brought the shoes back to the United States and founded a sustainable shoemaking business in 2010 in Austin, Texas.

Now, Fortress specializes in handcrafted goods, emphasizing a professional culture driven by “fair wages, gender equity, and good working conditions” for everyone in the company. Their motto reflects the underlying sentiment that drives the company’s commitment to Fair Trade: “We believe the people who make our shoes are just as important as the people who buy them.”

Fortress partners with multiple family-owned factories in Peru, empowering local communities in a region considered to be “highly vulnerable to climate change” due to its vulnerability traits:¹

• Low coastal habitats
• Susceptibility to deforestation, erosion, and natural disasters
• Susceptibility to drought and desertification
• High pollution levels in urban areas
• Fragile ecosystems

These sustainable shoes are crafted with natural materials, such as high-quality, full-grain leather (meaning the hair is removed from the skin and it’s immediately taken to the tanning process), rubber, and wood.

Fortress prioritizes equal treatment and environmental consciousness in every pair of shoes they produce. With this footwear, you’ll stay committed to your sustainable, humanitarian lifestyle with each step you take.

What We Love About These Sustainable Shoes

The Ocelot Market takes a different approach to sustainability than many other modern shoe brands. Instead of focusing exclusively on what they can repurpose today, the company looks to the past and uses techniques that have stood the test of time.

CANO is one of the youngest brands sold by Ocelot Market. It offers sustainably, ethically handcrafted footwear, designed and molded by Mexican artisans.

These shoes are modeled following traditional styles with a contemporary twist, with both aspects manifesting in one key practice: A 200-year-old vegetable leather tanning method that ensures the lowest possible environmental impact for shoemaking.

Vegetable tanning is the oldest process still used in the tanning industry. Historically, it relies entirely on raw materials, mainly the tannins, a type of chemical compound, found in many types of plants, including mimosa, birch, sweet chestnut, various oaks, willow, and so much more.⁶

To this day, it remains one of the best ways to make leather, especially considering the worsening climate impacts communities face worldwide. In addition to their eco-conscious production methods, CANO artisans receive fair pay for every shoe they make and thrive in a safe and healthy work environment.

The benefits of Ocelot Market exceed that of sustainable living, ensuring the preservation of ancient traditions and fair treatment of Mexican artisans in partnership with the company.

What We Love About These Sustainable Shoes

“Our business started to create jobs, and we’ve held true to that.”

The Root Collective aims to improve the lives of their partners running the small workshops in Guatemala, responsible for making eco-friendly footwear, while also empowering everyday people to be fashionable and sustainable.

Similar to Fortress, The Root Collective believes that “the people who make the things we buy are every bit as important as the people who wear them.” It’s for this very reason that they refuse to mass manufacture but rely on the expertise of small-batch artisans, each of whom is paid a fair wage.

But their efforts in improving global sustainability don’t end with their shoes. Instead, The Root Collective offers its customers a collection of resources on ethical shopping to ensure their entire wardrobe is eco-conscious.

The company’s founder, Bethany Tran, cares deeply for all the people who craft the beautiful footwear filling this environmentally friendly inventory. Tran tells the story of many Guatemalan artisans on the company website, sharing how the company has helped improve their families’ lives.

Everyone in partnership with The Root Collective earns anywhere from 50-400 percent above the country’s Fair Wage minimum, ensuring a high quality of life for all involved. This company encourages a deep emotional bond and genuine support of each and every artisan who contributes to this sustainable brand. Choosing The Root Collective for your footwear isn’t just beneficial for global ecosystems, but humanity, too.

Why Shop for Sustainable Footwear?

Many of the manufacturers listed here were inspired to produce environmentally friendly shoe-wear to combat the damage from the “fast fashion” industry.

Unfortunately, when most people consider the environmental costs of this facet of consumer culture, they only think of the rapid production and waste of clothing, driven by short-lived fads, forgetting the impact of the shoe industry. Yet, footwear contributes to the problem, too, and quite significantly.

Shoe manufacturers reflect many of the same practices as clothing makers, particularly in terms of the harmful materials collection (especially for fibers and non-recyclable plastic) and mass production and disposal. These issues manifest in the following ecological consequences:

• Materials and manufacturing: Extracting and assembling shoe materials makes up the bulk of shoes’ carbon emissions, which are approximately 14 kg CO₂-eq (about 31 lbs) per pair, based on recent studies. Researchers state, “[T]he material processing and manufacturing phases of [the shoes’] life cycle dominate its lifecycle GHG emissions.” (“GHG” means “greenhouse gas.”)⁹
• Mass production: In 2018, shoe manufacturers produced 24.2 billion pairs of shoes, about three percent more than the year before. Yet, the industry has grown by 20.5 percent when compared to 2010 production levels. This requires a devastating amount of energy and resources.⁹For instance, one pair of leather shoes was found to use about 8.4 L of water for a lifetime of 3,650 hours. The same pair also required approximately 18.04 MJ (megajoules) of energy, and emitted roughly 3.31 kg CO₂-eq (7.30 lbs).⁹
• Disposal: Recycling rates for clothing and footwear are alarmingly low. In 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that only about 13 percent of these goods were cycled. Each of the pairs tossed in landfills instead take at least 30-40 years to decompose, leading the waste to accumulate much more quickly than it can degrade.^10,11

Swapping your current footwear for a more sustainable brands can do wonders for environmental health. Too few people consider how their shoes contribute to climate change. Yet, “green-ifying” this aspect of your wardrobe, among others can help shrink your carbon footprint dramatically.

Keep Your Kicks Cruelty-Free

Shoe production places a pretty hefty burden on environmental health. You can help mitigate the devastation to global ecosystems by swapping out your current boots or tennis shoes with vegan, fair trade sustainable shoe options instead.

Yet, for many of these sustainable shoes, you’ll need to ship your footwear out to your home, so you can use tree planting offsets to erase transportation emissions and make your shoes entirely carbon neutral with one of the top carbon offset providers. Use an ecological footprint calculator to measure your annual emissions as well, so you can offset your sustainable shoes, and all the greenhouse gases you generate, to achieve a completely carbon neutral lifestyle.