With many footwear brands now offering Environmentally-friendly ranges of their products, are consumers willing to help the environment by changing their buying habits?

Making shoes does have an impact on the environment. The production methods used, sourcing of raw materials, and other processes in the manufacture can all be harmful. Plus, once you’ve finished wearing the shoes, disposal can also be a big issue.

These factors, together with the increasing volume of shoes consumers are now buying, and the transportation of them around the World, all contribute to making a large environmental footprint for some brands.

Some leading brands are now joining the previously niche market of eco friendly shoes, and offering these alongside their traditional ranges. These often use materials such as organic cotton, and FSC-certified rubber, and colour the shoes using non-bleaching processes.

The cost of making eco-friendly shoes is often higher than their standard counterparts, so in these environmentally-aware days, are shoe-buying customers willing to pay slightly more for footwear that’s been made with the planet in mind?

It would appear that they may not be. In a recent survey of over five hundred shoe buyers in the United Kingdom, just 3% said that Eco Friendly methods were very important to them when considering which footwear to purchase. The most important factors were the price and the brand, with over 40% choosing price as the determining issue on whether to buy.

Search results from Google would also support, this with terms such as ‘eco friendly shoes’ getting a low number of searches, and this shows no indications of increasing significantly.

However, some brands like Patagonia do seem to be doing well with eco-friendly ranges. The company have managed to incorporate an eco-friendly ethos, yet produce commercially appealing shoes that are proving popular with more and more consumers.

So, while it does seem that, especially in these current financial times, many consumers are choosing to put price before production methods, there are signs that the footwear industry is starting to take its’ environmental responsibilities onboard.