I splurged and bought myself a pair of locally made vegan cork sneakers from Reefer Shoes and I’m totally in love!
Corks
Reefer Shoes is a local small business that makes these awesome vegan cork sneakers. You can buy them in natural, black, green, sunflower, and navy. The cork used is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. The FSC ensures that FSC certified forests are responsibly managed, and only harvested at such a rate that the forest itself can manage to reproduce.
a little bit about cork
I love cork so much that I have quite a few items made from cork, including a lamp, handbag, planter, and now my new sneakers! Not only does natural cork look great, but it is also a sustainable material. Cork Oak trees are locally grown all around Cape Town. It can be grown without irrigation and without the use of chemical herbicides or fertilizers. Cork is water repellent, stain-resistant and scratch-proof.
According to Amorim, Cork trees over 25 years of age, are harvested every 9 years by stripping the bark from the tree, without damaging the trunk itself. Because the typical lifespan of a cork tree is approximately 200 years, the cork tree can be harvested around 17 times.
CO2 & Trees
CO2 is the main gas responsible for trapping heat in our atmosphere. This trapped heat, means that the globe is warming and our climate is changing in many ways (extreme weather events, rising seas, decline of wildlife populations and habitats, etc.). The biggest contributers to CO2 in the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels. Other contributers are deforestation, land clearing (usually for agriculture) and the degradation of soils.
Trees are known climate change fighters as they are great at converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen. What makes cork oak trees so special is that they are also able to capture and store CO2 each time bark is harvested and regrown. This is called “carbon fixing”, which helps combat the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Where to buy?
You can buy Corks vegan cork shoes directly from the Reefer online store. Shipping is Free!
Do you love cork as much as I do? Have you been to the Reefer online store? I’d love to hear from you in a comment below. If you’d like to see more shoes I love, have a look here. Alternatively, if you’d like to see more of the green vegan fashion products I have found, have a look here. New products posted regularly.
Let’s get social!
Be sure to follow Reefer Shoes on Facebook and Instagram, and follow me on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date with my posts! If you end up buying a pair, after reading about it for the first time here, please tag me and let me know what you think. Remember to hashtag it #thegreenveganchick
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