Blog #5- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Personally, I love wearing shoes, the variety is just endless. There are so many different color-ways, brands & shapes. Shoes as well with clothing can be a great way to express yourself.
In “The wildly complex anatomy of a sneaker” a Ted Talk emphasizes on the effects sneakers have on people and the world. They state that shoe manufacturing is accountable for ⅕ of the fashion industry carbons emissions and how sneaker consumption is at an all time high right now.
Factories have to meet this unprecedented demand and produce over 23 million shoes a year, this creates dangerous working conditions for factory workers. The main message of this Ted Talk is to shine light on the ongoing problem of sneaker consumption and what we can do to stop it.
The United States buys more sneakers than any other country, each person buys about 3 pairs of shoes each year. Some more than others. The Ted Talk ultimately promotes the simple solution of reusing shoes until they are not wearable anymore, reducing the amount of shoes being bought, therefore not buying an unnecessary amount of shoes that are not needed. This could necessarily be the hardest part since it has become the norm to buy shoes that are not needed simply for one's pleasure. Lastly, they recommend recycling. Make it a continuous cycle and donate your shoes even if you don’t find them pretty or useful, someone else could use them. It takes about 1,000 years for shoes to degrade. They encourage designers to use more eco-friendly materials like organic cotton, wool and hemp as well as many more that will cut shoe degrading time.
I found this Ted Talk extremely enlightening because you never really think about the process of shoe manufacturing nor what happens after you discard a shoe. It is very opening and can help raise awareness as well as create a change. We should all think more about our environment and do our part to help stop sneaker consumption.
Word Count: 333
Hi Yara,
ReplyDeleteI never knew how many shoes were manufactured by factories annually--I thought that it would have been a larger number than 23 million shoes per year. I also thought that the average number of pairs of shoes that one buys would have been 2, not 3. The idea of reusing shoes until they are unwearable sounds like a good idea in my opinion, however I have had shoes before that have gone bad even a year into wearing them. 1,000 years sounds like a lot but the bottoms of my shoes have been damaged only 5 months into wearing my shoes sometimes.
Nice post!