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VEJA co-founder Sébastien Kopp shares how the brand’s newest hiking shoe is sustainably-made.
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Introducing VEJA’S hiking shoes that are every bit as sustainable as their sneakers known for gracing the heels of the world’s most photographed princesses, duchesses and influencers. After all, if your everyday shoes can be made as sustainably and ethically as possible, why not support a brand prioritizing impact and profit? But, with VEJA’s hiking shoes the brand takes it one step further to craft a performance shoe that is made from a combination of recycled polyester, rubber and sugarcane. No single-use plastic here! And, co-founder Sébastien Kopp shares a deeper insight into how these materials are considerably more environmental than other materials available on the market.
Because even the name VEJA references sustainability, the brand has transparently allowed customers to look with them into their production practices. ‘Veja’ means ‘look’ in Portuguese, referencing the brand’s commitment to looking into how their shoes are made. From their website to interviews like this, the brand has consistently shared information about how they source raw materials, their fair trade practices and partnerships with suppliers and manufacturers to show how they are and even aren’t sustainable. For instance, their website shares how their journey to becoming a B-Corp highlighted both what the brand is doing right and their weakness. The brand was proudly certified in 2018 with an impact score of 84.2.
Keeping in-line with their transparent practices, you can read more about the materials below.
Why do you choose to use sugarcane? Is it sustainably-sourced?
We started using sugar cane in our running shoes in 2019. It is the main material to replace plastic. As you know, sugar cane is used also to produce ethanol, to replace gasoline in cars. It is really interesting to replace petroleum-based products by bio-materials. The dark side of sugar cane is the way it is harvested: the social conditions in the field are terrible. We created fair trade principles to buy our regenerative and organic cotton, we did it for wild rubber in Amazonia to ensure people make a good living from it. The social conditions of sugar cane harvesting is the next frontier for us, we started to work on it in 2019, but do not have the results to show yet. We always speak once it is done, never before.
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How is the rubber sustainably and ethically sourced?
VEJA is all about deconstructing the old supply chains to build them in a new way. We have started to use wild rubber from the Amazon rainforest in our sneakers in 2005. The difference is at VEJA we source this raw material directly from the field. Today we have a 10 person team in Amazonia in charge of our rubber supply, working directly in the forest with the rubber producers. In 2022, we bought 600 tons of rubber in the forest, through fair trade contracts, paying 4 times the market price for this rubber to ensure the producers have a decent way of living… We do a lot of projects in the forest, and we realized after 2 or 3 years that buying the rubber from the forest was a way to give an economic value and to avoid destroying it. Our rubber does not come from plantations, it comes from the forest. We received the Chico Mendes Prize in 2015, which is a prize given to the guardians of the forest. Very few people know about the density of our project, we do not communicate so well. But we do it primarily for us.
What is Trek-Shell?
The trek shell is a kind of cordura: a canvas that is very tightly woven. It is super solid and completely waterproof. We did it in recycled polyester. But that was not the main challenge. Most of the time, the most well-known waterproof technologies like Gore-Tex are full of PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances). Those substances are called “forever chemicals” as they persist in the environment forever. Our goal was to get rid of PFAS and we started with this shoe.
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What’s the most sustainable way to dispose of these boots? Can they be re-recycled?
We started our recycling program in the 2020. The soles of other brands running shoes are the most difficult to recycle, as the materials are mixed. We will show results very soon…