Hush Puppies has released its most sustainable footwear range yet, made from recycled plastic water bottles.
The new collection – labelled The Good Shoe – is 100-per-cent sustainably produced using recycled Flyknit, a recycled post-consumer plastic turned into knit.
The Good Shoe program has so far seen 612,500 plastic bottles diverted from landfill around the world.
The shoes use leather sustainably sourced from the Leather Working Group tannery which uses environmental best practices and performance in all leather production, including chemical and water management, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste management, and hide traceability.
And they are sold in shoe boxes made from FSC MIX raw materials with eco-friendly, non-toxic inks – that means the entire shoebox can be reused before being recycled.
Hush Puppies has produced 22,500 pairs of shoes and of the current SS21 range, 29 per cent contain eco-friendly, recycled heel grips in place of conventional synthetic materials.
The brand has reached the milestone of 50 per cent of its shoes produced using leathers certified by the Leather Working Group.
“This means Hush Puppies is partnering with best in-practice tanneries who are setting the trend on sustainability and water/energy saving methods when producing the leathers,” the company said in a statement.
Perhaps the next step in the brand’s evolution will be using plant-based leathers like Denmark’s Beyond Leather, which makes synthetic leather from apple waste.
But until then, Hush Puppies is in good company. New Zealand fashion brand Deadly Ponies is using sustainably and ethically sourced leathers to make accessories while British luxury brand Mulberry is extending the life of every bag it sells by committing to repair or buy them back, then resell or repurpose them.
