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Eco Friendly Shoes
Eco Friendly Shoes - are consumers buying them?
With many footwear brands now offering Eco-Friendly Shoes
as part of their product ranges, are consumers willing to change their buying habits to help the environment?Making shoes does have an impact on the environment. The sourcing of raw materials, bleaching used and other processes in the manufacture can all be harmful. Plus, once you have finished wearing the shoes, disposal can also be a big issue.
These, together with the sheer number of shoes consumers are now buying, and the transportation of them around the World, all add up to making some brands of shoes very non-eco.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 methods.
The cost of making eco-friendly shoes is often higher than their standard counterparts, so in these environmentally-aware days, are consumers willing to pay slightly more for footwear that has been made with the planet in mind?It would appear that they may not be. In a recent survey of over 500 UK shoe buyers, 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% opting for price as the determining issue on whether to purchase or not.
Search results from Google would also support this with terms such as "eco friendly shoes" getting very low number of searches, and showing no signs of increasing significantly.
However, some brands such as Patagonia
do seem to be bucking the trend,. The company have managed to incorporate an eco-friendly ethos, yet produce commercially appealing footwear that is proving popular with more and more consumers.So, while it does seem that, in these difficult financial times, many consumers are opting to put price before production methods, there are signs that the footwear industry is starting to take their environmental responsibilities onboard.