Simple Shoes: A larger footprint than I expected
Recently, I bought a brand new pair of toddler Simple Shoes for the Little One. They are stinkin adorable, and I liked, at first blush, the philosophy of the company…..at least the one printed on the box: It starts “with all of the overbuilt, over-hyped products out there, it’s pretty hard to find sustainable shoes that you can live with…..” Awesome! You’re speaking to me! It isn’t often that I buy new shoes simply for this reason – I do go out of my way to buy them second or third-hand when I need them, especially for the Little One, who will just outgrow them or wear them out beyond recognition in a month’s time.
It goes on: “HOW we make our shoes is just as important as WHY we make them. That means finding more sustainable ways of doing business so we can make a gazillion more”. Okay, okay, the gazillion figure is a little troubling, but still, you had me at ‘sustainable’. The salesperson at the store gushed about how Simple uses all recycled products in their shoe lines, ie soles made from rubber tires, and I am seriously digging this company. Maybe I’ll even buy a pair new for myself.
The shoes look great on the Little One. But about the third or fourth wearing, as I was putting them on his little feet, I noticed the sizing tag under the tongue of the shoe: “Made in China”. My heart drops. Simple, you lost me. I go on to wonder what else is hiding behind the philosophy of the Simple Shoe manufacturers. Recycled goods shipped to China, shoes made at a low low cost, shoes shipped back to the US? Honestly, this is a much larger (carbon) footprint than I imagined, especially given your marketing keywords. Please do not make a gazillion of them in this manner.
Back to the consignment shops I go.
I think Simple Shoes is not alone in the world of large footprints. Several months ago, I read a New Yorker profile of Cheung Yan, known as China’s Wastepaper Queen. She became the wealthiest woman in China by importing waste paper from the U.S. (for years rags, scrap and trash have served as ballast on empty ships returning to China after delivering goods being exported to the U.S.) She built factories to recycle our waste into paper and cartons to package (you guessed it) more Chinese manufactured goods for export.
Simple Shoes’ website indicates that their shoes are made in China in order to be close to suppliers of recycled products. My attempts at Google searches for recycled products made in this country only bring up consumer goods made of recycled materials, not the actual materials used in making them. It’s pretty easy, though, to find Chinese companies that make things like sheets of recycled aluminum.
Maybe we just don’t know enough about what really happens to all the stuff we put into recycling bins here!
This just boggles my mind. The wealthiest woman in China got that way by making use of US trash. Is it not at least feasible for someone in the US to do the same? Does it not at least make sense?
I saw a similar TV segment on how electronic waste almost invariably makes its way overseas for disassembling, despite the claims to the contrary of the US companies who are entrusted with the job of recycling it domestically.