Veja is launching a new line of sustainable vegan shoes made from veggie scraps.
The French footwear brand’s new sneakers—dubbed Urca—are made from food waste. The Urca is an updated, vegan version of the brand’s classic V-12 leather trainers. They feature Veja’s corn waste leather—a biodegradable material made from a waxed canvas with 50 percent corn waste leftover from the food industry.
The sneakers feature Veja’s white silhouette. They are embellished with six different colorways and feature 100 percent organic cotton laces.
The new vegan shoes are part of the brand’s fall/winter 2020 collection. They will launch on August 10 online.
Sustainable Shoes
Since launching in 2005, the brand has released a number of vegan shoes. Approximately one out of every three pairs of Veja shoes made are free of animal products, according to the company.
This release of the Urcas won’t be the first time the company has used food waste to create its sneakers. Last year, the brand launched a vegan sneaker range, the CAMPO, made from the corn waste leather. The shoes are up to 63 percent biodegradable.
The company is known for using sustainable materials. In addition to organic cotton and corn leather, the brand has even used recycled plastic bottles to craft its sneakers.
Veja’s founders, Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion, created the sustainable footwear company after seeing the deplorable living conditions workers lived in at a Chinese clothing factory.
“We thought we should try and reinvent a product. But not just any product, the most symbolic product of our generation,” Kopp said in a statement.
He added: “We wanted to deconstruct it and rebuild it differently. And it was obvious to us that this object was going to be a new brand of sneakers.”
Ghislain Morillion says the brand was able to spend more money on ensuring its products were sustainable by not advertising.
“We could reallocate advertising resources to production, raw materials, and the people who make the sneakers. Producing sneakers that do respect the environment, sneakers with greater economic justice, simply by removing advertising from the equation,” Ghislain Morillion said.
The brand currently has more than 45 vegan trainers available online.
