Having recently judged a competition where young people are tasked with being innovative entrepreneurs, it’s clear that many of the today’s youth have creativity and passion spilling out all over the place. Such is the case of three design students at University of London who, as part of their graduate art project, creative colorfully stylish sneakers from garbage.
These multi-colored sneakers, pointedly called “Everything You Buy is Rubbish” -are made of plastic debris collected after the three students scoured local beaches and the plentiful discarded trash they discovered there. After sorting their “bounty” by color, the plastic was melted it down in a convection oven, flattened it into a single sheet, then wrapped it around a sneaker mold. The pieces were hand-stitched together. The shoe laces were woven from used fishing rope the trio found in a town on the coast on the English Channel. The entire process -from design to finished product – took two weeks.
Discarded trash is growing epidemic worldwide. The World Bank states that 1.43 billion tons of solid waste is discarded each year. They estimate this figure will increase to 2.42 billion by the year 2025. The ci-designers of these sneakers don’t want to point fingers. They simply want to raise awareness and help further the conversation on this serious issue of consumer waste. These shoes aren’t for sale but wouldn’t it be something if someone took up this idea and did make it a viable product? That would certainly give the wasted plastic a new and useful life.