Sustainable Shoes That Grow Into Apple Trees When Discarded And Planted

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What happens to shoes when they’re too old and broken to be used? These are often thrown in the trash where they’re collected and dumped in landfills. This has been the practice for years now, and honestly, it doesn’t help the environment in any way.

What if someone thought about designing shoes made from sustainable materials that can be replanted into trees that actually serve the environment? This is exactly what one guy thought about, and with his Kickstarter campaign, people are buying his shoes.

Those cheap shoes that end up in landfills should be phased out. What people need right now is quality – one that will give back to the environment. Hence, this was when the legend of Johnny Appleseed came to be. It’s about one man who walked around Ontario and all over the northern United States. He talked about apple pips to the U.S. and to Ontario back in the 1800s. As for the shoes, these eventually grow into an apple tree when they are thrown on the ground.

The shoes was designed to tackle one problem, and that is on plastic pollution. But it also goes beyond that because it also addresses the need for reforestation. Credit can be given to 33-year-old Toronto resident named Luc Houle.


The idea struck him while he was working in the fast fashion industry, an industry that contributed a lot to the landfills.”Plastic sticks around for about 1,000 years after we throw it away,” Houle said. “I kind of wanted to do something to fix that,” he added. He didn’t like the idea and started working hard to make sure that “Johnny” was brought to the market through Kickstarter. When this started, they were just $1,000 short from the $55,000 target that was set.

So, how do the Johnnys look? Essentially, these are simple canvas shoes that can be worn every day. These have been designed and made without the use of plastic. Instead, they made these with Fair Trade biodegradable materials for the first time in shoe history.


The Johnny shoes are designed to be cushiony, lightweight, and water-resistant. And to those who are concerned that these will start to break down when worn constantly, it doesn’t. You have years on you to wear them down. Then, you can get rid of the new kicks  by burying them. Placed deep within the sole is an apple seed that is encased in fertilizer.

The materials that the shoe is made from are made with naturally-occurring compounds that are designed to attract microorganisms that eventually feed on it and break down the shoe within three years’ time. And if you don’t get to bury these properly, they can still biodegrade in a landfill.

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A price of $109 can already get you a pair of Johnnys, something that many people can afford. And should this Kickstarter campaign garner success, Houle has plans to make all the designs available to the market by August of next year.

“The nice thing about this project is that because it’s a biodegradable sneaker that grows into a tree, we can kind of help number one, offset people’s carbon footprint, but we’re also helping eliminate plastics,” Houle said when he spoke to Blog Toronto. “And the more people we can reach with that the more of an impact we can have.”

 

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