Choose sustainable hiking boots
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Your outdoor gear should reflect your love of the earth, so whether you’re heading to a local campground for a weekend getaway or climbing the next big peak, you’ll want to choose sustainable boots.
Find it! Sustainable hiking boots
Choosing hiking boots made from natural materials results in minimal environmental damage during the production process and limits the amount of harmful synthetic materials used by substituting natural ones. Look for materials like low-impact leather or imitation leather, hemp, organic cotton, water-based adhesives, vegetable dyes, and recycled content.
- Green Home environmental superstore men's and women's hiking boots
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Green Home offers several models of hiking boots for men and women made from hemp, cotton, and recycled rubber. - Nikwax
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This water-repellent coating made from beeswax and water-based finishes will wash-up and protect your boots, tents, and other outdoor gear sans petroleum byproducts, keeping them clean without affecting their breathability, wicking properties, or ability to repel water. - Pachira Hemp Hiking Boot
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This is an eco-friendly boot all-around! It’s got recycled foam in the insole and tongue, recycled-content imitation leather trim, post-consumer tire rubber sole, and hemp and cotton uppers. Made to withstand all kinds of hiking abuse. - Patagonia Finn Hiking Shoe
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Patagonia's Finn light hiking shoes have outsoles that contain up to 30 percent recycled rubber. - Timberland Greenscapes Mountain Sneaker
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This environmentally friendly mountain shoe is made from organically tanned, premium full grain leather and fast growing hemp uppers—for comfort, durability, and abrasion resistance. - Vegetarian Shoes Veggie Trekker MKIV Hiker
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Made with durable Vegetan Micro Uppers, these breathable boots have a one-piece upper pattern and riveted D-ring lace fasteners with locking hook. They’re insulated throughout so ideal for colder hikes.
Before you buy
Trade-offs are somewhat common when purchasing green. While buying what can be considered “vegan” footwear is certainly an eco-fashion statement, man-made imitation animal products are usually made of polyester and acrylic fibers—synthetic, frequently petroleum-based materials that generate significant amounts of factory pollution.[1] So before purchasing that faux leather boot, consider both the benefits and disadvantages of your action. See Drawbacks: Pleather for more detailed information.
Choosing sustainably-made hiking boots helps you go green because...
- Buying products with recycled content keeps valuable materials out of landfills and saves new materials from being harvested.
- Hemp and organic cotton are grown chemical-free in a sustainable manner.
- Using enzymes in the production of leather instead of chemicals cuts back on the pollution that typically results from the tanning process.
Conventional hiking boots, like most other footwear, come with a steep environmental price. High-tech outdoor gear is often treated with synthetic chemicals to achieve water-proofing, among other performance-enhancing features, yet these materials add toxic solvents and factory waste to the environment.[2] Conventional boots are usually made with synthetic materials that contain PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a hazardous plastic, which contribute toxic substances to the environment. Dioxins are released both when PVC is manufactured, as well as when it is incinerated. Hiking boots can also contain phthalates, which are used to make plastics flexible. These chemicals can affect sexual development and reproduction, and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) in particular is a suspected human carcinogen.[3]
Although desired by many, leather—the byproduct of animal skins—is ecologically harmful. For one, raising livestock for meat and leather production requires a great deal of feed, land, water, and fossil fuels. Factory farms generate 130 times the amount of excrement as the entire human population; the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has noted that livestock pollution is the most damaging threat to American waterways.[4] Additionally, the shoe industry produces waste during the leather tanning process. The chemicals traditionally used in pre-tanning include lime, sodium chloride, sodium sulphide, and other solvents, all of which pollute the environment.[5]
Green options on the horizon
Eco-friendly boot materials abound—everything from hemp to vegetable-based dyes, water-based adhesives to recycled rubber tires, organic cotton to low-impact tanning methods.[6] In fact, scientists in India have zeroed in on enzymes, a natural alternative, that can replace the chemicals and cut down on the pollution from leather tanning by 85 percent.[7] Microfiber artificial leather is another alternative to traditional leather that's safer for the environment. Microfiber leather avoids using organic solvents released during tanning (which end up in the effluent wastewater).[8]
There are also new processes that can reduce the amount of toxins released during the production of rubber, which is often used in the outsoles of boots. By using natural materials such as vegetable oils and changing the processing methods, chemists have been able to develop a greener rubber outsole. With this process, 96 percent fewer toxic substances are released by weight. Boots with green rubber look, perform, and cost the same as those with traditional rubber.[9]
Drawbacks: Pleather
Choosing imitation leather may leave you feeling warm and green all over, but pleather poses a range of ecological hazards in its production. Faux leather is made from a soft form of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, commonly known as vinyl. Manufacturing this material involves toxins such as dioxin, lead, and phthalates, which cause a variety of health problems.[10] Using polyurethane to make imitation leather is slightly preferable to PVC plastic.[11] Some companies have already started to phase out PVC in their products (IKEA, Microsoft, and Nike, among others), but a simple question put to store managers or manufacturers should help you find out the nature of the pleather used.[10]
Controversies: hemp and marijuana
Hemp and marijuana are both members of the plant species Cannabis sativa and have both been considered Schedule One controlled substances in the United States since the late 1950s.[12] While it is a crime to grow all forms of cannabis in the US, it is not illegal to sell hemp products such as paper and clothing. Cannabis grown for industrial purposes (hemp), and cannabis grown for recreational and medicinal uses (marijuana) have a different biological makeup. Both contain two distinct "cannabinoids:" the psychoactive THC and the anti-psychoactive CBD. Industrial hemp contains high levels of CBD and low levels—less than 1 percent—of THC, while the makeup of marijuana is the reverse. It is nearly impossible to achieve a narcotic high from smoking hemp.[13] The farming of industrial hemp in the US has been virtually banned by the federal government since 1957 because of its association with marijuana, and it therefore must be imported from countries such as England, Germany, and Canada.[14][15]
Glossary
- dioxins: Chemicals produced during industrial processes, most often combustion.[16] They contain chlorine that can harm humans, usually when ingested through food grown in soil where dioxins have accumulated.[17]
External links
- Hemp Industries Association
- Sustainable Style Foundation
- The Green Guide - Product Report: Shoes
- International Council of Tanners
- Hemp Stores Directory of retailers that sell hemp-based clothing and other products
Footnotes
- Fur Commission USA - Should You Be Faking It?
- BNET - Head for the hills: low-impact gear for the great outdoors - environmentally friendly camping gear
- The Green Guide - Shoes: The Problems
- Cows are Cool - Leather: No Friend of the Earth
- The Green Guide - Product Report: Shoes
- Joel Makower - Nike Things Considered
- Hindu Business Line - CLRI develops eco-friendly leather processing technology
- Japan's Corporate News Network - Kuraray Develops Eco-friendly Artificial Leather
- American Chemical Society - Green Shoes
- Grist - You Down With PVC?
- Greenpeace - PVC products
- Globalhemp.com - Industrial Hemp Investigative and Advisory Task Force Report
- Arizona Industrial Hemp Council - Hemp vs. Marijuana
- Hempcar TransAmerica - Hemp and the Law
- Drug War Facts - Factbook: Hemp
- DioxinFacts.org - Dioxins in Depth
- Greenpeace US - The Greenpeace 2001 Athletic Shoe Shopping Guide
