January 2016

Plastic, Plastic, Plastic

Uncategorized, One Comment
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Oooh, pretty isn’t it. Just kidding, that’s a load of trash.

“The world’s oceans will be filled with more plastic mass than fish mass by 2050.” – The World Economic Forum (Article: http://time.com/4186250/ocean-plastic-fish/)

Wow, that’s a pretty staggering statistic isn’t it? I can’t even imagine what it would be like for our oceans to be filled with more plastic than fish.

In our sustainability marketing class, it’s interesting to learn more about the impact of the business practices and lifestyles that we currently have on our environment. We learn about both extreme ends of the spectrum in which there are companies that seem like they don’t care about the environment at all and produce tons of greenhouse gases, while there are people who try to minimize their environmental footprint as much as possible by doing things like pursuing zero waste lifestyles.

Anyways, after some searching online, I found out more about ocean plastic at plasticoceans.net. The site provides some pretty compelling facts about the extent of the damage that our plastic waste is doing to the oceans, such as the environmental, human, and economic impacts.

And…here are some lovely photos from Google showing the extent of the ocean plastic conundrum:ase18

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I don’t know about you, but honestly, these photos make me never want to throw anything away or litter ever again. Perhaps this is how Ray Anderson felt when he had that eureka moment realizing that Interface could not continue down its current path.

Having watched Finding Nemo and Planet Earth, this makes me think of all those wonderful sea creatures and cute fish and realizing that they are dying out or suffering because of all the ocean plastic that we’re contributing to the environment. It’s quite tragic really.

I mean, do all these products that we’re consuming even need all of this plastic packaging? I ordered some stuff from Amazon the other day and there was bubble wrap on top of plastic wrap on top of more plastic wrap until finally there’s the product I ordered.

We’re pretty much screwing up the Earth for the next generation and the time to start doing something about it is now. Hopefully someday we can live in a society that recycles more than we throw things away. What do you think about all of this? Leave your comments below!

I am very selective when I buy shoes. Extremely selective in fact, as I only buy one pair of shoes a year. The pair of shoes that I buy is the latest pair from the Nike Lunarglide series. I like them because they’re comfortable, versatile, and durable.

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The LunarGlide 7s. Aren’t they pretty?

Why am I telling you this? Well, during our discussion last week regarding Adidas’ pair of ocean plastic shoes, I was feeling skeptical. Why on earth would anyone want to buy these shoes? Shoes made from ocean trash? Let’s just hope the shoes aren’t trash themselves. I’m no expert in shoes, but ocean plastic does not seem like very durable material.

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The highly acclaimed ocean plastic shoes from Adidas.

Aesthetically, the shoes do look pretty cool, but I’m not quite sure how they will perform functionally. I’m afraid that Adidas’ focus might’ve been green first, great second, instead of the other way around. Anyways, being a bit disappointed in these “sustainable” shoes, I decided to do a Google search for some real sustainable shoes.

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Now take a look at these shoes. What do you notice about them? Not much right. They look like any ordinary pair of sneakers. However, the cool thing is that this particular pair of shoes was sustainably made.

 

My search for sustainable shoes led me to an interesting article from Wired (http://(http://www.wired.com/2016/01/these-are-the-coolest-sustainable-sneakers-weve-ever-seen/#slide-2), which told the story of two business students who decided to start their own eco-friendly shoe company called Vega.

 

Using sustainable materials to create their shoes, the shoes don’t look eco friendly, yet the shoes themselves are extremely eco-friendly. However, the prices aren’t unreasonably high either, the cool thing about Vega is that they keep their prices reasonable by having zero to low advertising.

 

For myself, I’m generally a bit of a skeptic towards sustainable products as sometimes there can be some greenwashing involved, so it’s refreshing to see a company like Vega be committed to making a positive impact on the world through genuine and transparent sustainable practices (you can find out more about them on their website).

 

Personally, I feel like Vega’s vision and style of sustainable shoes is much more practical and impactful than Adidas’, and it will definitely be interesting to see how sustainability and the trend towards being more eco-friendly will affect the shoe industry in the future.