It seems like we're on a water bottle roll! If you didn't read yesterday's blog, it's all about reducing the plastic water bottles and ditching them for reusable bottles. Today is all about how to re-purpose some of the water bottle waste we already have.
I want to make the right choices in my life: to be friendly to the environment and help reverse global warming. That's a pretty tall order. I also want to look put together and wear some fun clothes sometimes, and finding the best environmentally conscious outfits can be a challenge. As we have talked about before, clothing is a very complicated issue whether to go with natural products or synthetic. The same is true for shoes. Should I choose cotton or wool shoes? What about leather which comes from cows that are one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases? Are man-made products that are usually derived from petroleum-based products? Rothy’s makes my footwear decisions easy for me. Let’s go with the stylish shoes that are made from recycled plastic, water bottles. Sounds like a game changing idea to me to transform a post-consumer, former landfill dweller into shoes. To make it even better they use 3D printing to manufacture their products, which creates very little production waste.
Humans buy approximately 1,000,000 single-use water bottles every minute. You read that right…every minute. These water bottles are one of the biggest pet-peeves I have, and we will talk about this more in other blogs, but for now let’s talk about a company that had a vision to repurpose and transform an item that usually ends up in the landfill into a pair of shoes.
I had heard about Rothy’s shoes and even seen a few people out and about wearing them, so I finally decided to splurge and I ordered my first pair. A few days later, they arrived in a simple, cardboard box, which could also be used as a shoe box for storage. No extra packaging. No bubble wrap and no boxes within boxes. Just one box and a little paper with two shoes inside. I’m loving it.
I have had my Rothy’s for a few months now and I have enjoyed wearing them and they clean up in a snap. I still have not needed to put them in the washing machine as they recommend, but I have cleaned them up with a little soap and a rag, and they looked brand new in less than a minute. I don’t think I want all of my shoes to be Rothy’s, but I certainly feel good about the process this company is using to produce these shoes. In just three years Rothy's has repurposed over 30 million plastic bottles destined for landfills. The only drawback is the price. They are not horribly expensive but they aren’t super economical either. The shoes cost between $125-$165.
I feel good about wearing these durable yet stylish shoes and it’s always fun to see someone else, who is also wearing Rothy’s. It’s so interesting how it usually sparks a conversation, and you realize you have run into someone from your same environmental tribe.