Materials

Wild rubber trees are native to the Amazon rainforest and produce latex naturally, kind of like a maple tree produces sap. After tappers extract it, they leave the tree alone to regenerate. This is important because the Amazon rainforest provides 20% of the world’s oxygen, and many environmentally-unkind industries are finding more economic excuses to cut these same trees down.

Now let’s talk about the tappers. They live in the rainforest, they have families to support, and wild rubber provides them with jobs and a steady income. So it creates an economy in the Amazon that isn’t based off deforestation, while protecting, and even lifting up, the locals.

All of the soles of our shoes are made of wild rubber. In the case of The Nudist and The Jules, the straps are as well. We’re the first company we know of to produce shoe straps made 100% of wild rubber, and the more shoes we sell, the more rainforest (and people) we’ll be able to protect.

The wild rubber on the soles of the sandals are vulcanized, and the straps are made from sheets that are barely processed. Low impact for the earth, high impact for your look.

Pineapple plants are typically known for their fruit, but take one second to Google them and you’ll see how many leaves they have. For the longest time, those leaves were discarded after the pineapple harvest. Since the plants only bear one fruit in their lifetime, this has amounted to a lot of wasted leaves. In fact, around 13 million tons of wasted leaves.

Now, pineapple farmers can make money from the leaves because the supplier we work with found a way to recycle them. The supplier’s founder, a woman who got her PhD at 50 and is our muse in life, developed a technique that essentially turns the leaves into fruit leather.

Bottom line: the pineapple farmers get more out of the hard work they put into their harvest. The leaves are saved and magically turned into fruit leather. So you can have your piña colada and drink it too. :) 

Fish scales are new to the scene, and that’s because our tannery in Iceland is one of the first to refine the process to perfection.

Fish are oftentimes descaled before they’re sent to wherever they go to be sold (your local market, restaurant, etc.). Our tannery, which is located on Iceland’s remote north coast and overlooks a fjord, takes these scales and makes them into leathers using geothermal energy.

Our tannery only uses the scales of fish that have already entered the food system, so they’re recycling a byproduct that would otherwise turn into waste. Instead of polluting the earth or ocean, they are handcrafted into shoes that look like snakeskin but are way better for the planet.