Last week we at Common Soles learned that we have been accepted as an official green business by Green America! This means that the Common Soles product, business practices, and processes we employ have been audited by the Green America research team to ensure they meet the established criteria to deem us a green business!
The auditing/screening process checks that we:
Today I received a new laptop battery – it’s pretty exciting for me because my current battery only holds a charge for about 5 minutes. So now I’m back humming 100% with this new battery and able to go about my day in my usual un-tethered manner! But what remains of this re-battery process is my old battery. Pretty much a useless item to me, so what do I do with this item which clearly has some toxic components inside of it? Dell did not provide any instruction for what to do. Ahh!!
So that’s my rant for the day – but it got us thinking about the afterlife of a Common Soles flip-flop. From the beginning we always told customers that they could return their old and worn out Common Soles to us, but since we’re only about a year old it just really hasn’t come up yet. So here it is – official now because it’s being written on our website which in 2010 terms means it might as well be the 10 Commandments.
Many brands have gotten quite creative with their packaging, offering innovative eco-friendly packaging instead of the classic cardboard box. A few of our favorites are from Timbuk2 and PACT. Timbuk2 has taken it to a whole new level by printing a map of the city of San Francisco on the outside of the plastic bag they ship their bags in. The map is dubbed “a waterproof San Francisco bike map”. Sweet! It’s amazingly detailed, and even has some of the companies favorite points of interest marked off on the map. We applaud this move as it gives a simple shipping bag a useful afterlife.
PACT has gone the full eco-route with their packaging. Claiming that you can toss the packaging in the dirt and it will completely decompose, label and all in less than 45 days. Cool!
Rao and I strongly believe that all businesses need to incorporate the consideration of environmental health into their business strategy and practices. We have made it a core tenant of the Common Soles business model from the beginning. Since making it public that we were going to be an environmentally conscious business we have made some significant headway. On a product side we have incorporated re-purposed materials into all our flip-flops. Components made from coconut shells and natural woven jute are prime examples. We also do not leverage heavy machinery in our manufacturing. All assembly is done by hand in the factories that make Common Soles. Cool!StartupNation.com A basic guide titled “9 Steps to Greening your Business”
Fast Company Some best practices and ideas shared in an article: “50 Ways to Green Your Business”
I always wanted to be a socially responsible entrepreneur and giving back to the community was a big part of it. That was the theme that got Dave and I together in this venture. The journey in this direction has opened a whole new perspective for us on conscious capitalism and environmental responsibility. We can’t help but notice and try emulating other businesses and initiatives in this direction. Here are links to some earlier blogs from Dave on some of the businesses we admire
EVA, (Ethylene-vinyl acetate) is some incredibly versatile stuff. It’s the elasticized polymer foam material used in most footwear to add support, structure, and cushioning. It’s incredibly versatile as it can be molded, dyed, cut, and shaped into just about any configuration. It’s incredibly inexpensive compared to the other materials used in footwear such as leather or rubber, and it’s darn easy to get good at working with it!
But it’s not all roses for this wonder material. EVA doesn’t break-down naturally and so it’s filling landfills across the globe with a product that doesn’t jive with nature. The manufacturing of EVA is a toxic process, and even though EVA scraps and used EVA can be recycled into new EVA – it’s not at all a green process.
Creating Community Through Food - right on Bi-Rite! We spotted this while in San Francisco. Bi-Rite is an institution in the city and I sure have eaten my fair share of ice-cream from them! While enjoying my latest cone in the corner of the busy shop I flipped through the Bi-Rite brochure. On the back page was one of the best statements of how an organization views it's business ecosystem. Here it is, enjoy!
Happy 2010!
So much to look forward to, and so much to look back at! My cousin in Israel takes incredible photos – here’s his first of 2010. Taken at Palmachim Beach, about 20km south of Tel-Aviv. We can't wait to share all we've been up to (and still going to do) here on our blog, Facebook page, and Twitter. So stay tuned and enjoy all the beautiful places.
We’re working hard on designing and manufacturing our footwear to be as sustainable as possible. What is sustainable in footwear though?? Sustainable footwear considers: raw materials, product design, manufacturing processes, end-of-useful-life policy, and a whole slew of other components. So many in fact that the only way a company can truly produce a pair of sustainably made footwear is to tackle one element of the process of achieving total sustainability at a time. We at Common Soles are currently focusing our efforts on materials and manufacturing processes right now. That is not to say we aren’t doing all we can elsewhere in the sustainability value chain – this is just our area of focus at the moment.
I wrote a bit about materials on October 22nd of this year. This post is on process. The big one we can influence as a band in the US making footwear overseas is how our factory sources materials. Sourcing is a blend of art and science and is a constant battle of quality versus cost. Being who we are (a social venture) we lean toward quality whenever we have a choice. The difficulty we run into often times is that we are quite small in the world of footwear manufacturing and thus often have little say. Not an excuse though…
Rao and I have literally scowered India for all and any eco-friendly materials to integrate in our forthcoming styles of flip-flops and footwear. We met with dozens of vendors selling product that comes from all over India and Asia. The bummer part is they all smiled when we asked for eco-friendly materials and kindly shook there heads. hmmm... what to do as we were not going to give up that easily!
It turns out there are quite a few eco-friendly materials that we could easily integrate into our footwear. They just hadn't been branded that way so nobody knew it, not even the vendors selling the goods. Here's a sampling of what we found and plan to integrate into our next few styles.
Jute: Jute is a vegetable fiber that grows all over India. In fact India harvests more than 2 million tons of jute every year which puts them in the lead for tonnage harvested in the world with the next country not even at half that. Jute is better known as Burlap here in the US, so now you all know what I'm talking about. Jute is 100% biodegradable and recyclable which makes us happy! Look for jute in our straps and soles in the future.
Paper: Paper pulp is used to make card-stock. We use card-stock for the hang-tags and hangers for our flip-flops. Apparently almost all the paper pulp processed in India is post-consumer which is something they completely fail to mention! It may be that post-consumer is perceived as a negative quality wise for the paper producers, but we see it as a positive!
Coconut: You all know the coconut. India harvests more than 9 million tons of it a year putting it at third in the world. The shell of coconuts can be cut and polished to produce a variety of materials which can be used in making a flip-flop. Coconut fiber is also used in several varieties of textile such as the popular Cocona material often used in sportswear.
While we were in India we took samples of the above materials and came up with a few prototypes that used as many eco-friendly materials as possible. Here are some pictures of that prototype. It has a woven jute sole impregnated with natural rubber for durability and traction, coconut beads and hardware on the strap, and a woven jute insole on the footbed. Let us know what you think!
-Dave
Some folks have been kind enough to tell us that they really like out company name and logo. Common Soles. Well, thanks! We like it as well. It's the play on the word "sole" that means the most. The "sole"-"soul" thing is more about getting excited about your passions than anything else. I've heard a lot lately about how things no longer have soul. "Music these days has no soul" or "Skiers have lost all soul in the sport". That's ridiculous. As long as you're putting in 100% and loving what you're doing then whatever it is has soul! Soul is about sharing excitement and passion. When passion is infused in an act then that act has got soul.
While in Business School at Babson College I was fortunate enough to hear a talk given by Gary Hirshberg, the founder and CEO of Stonyfield Farms (The yogurt producer). He shared with us his concept of "Doing Well by Doing Good" which he discusses in his book Stirring it Up. What impacted me was the story of how he had built his company into a successful model business by keeping in mind the positive change he could effect by being in business. Change such as awareness of environmental impact, and clean & green business practices. Everything from the milk he purchased to the packaging of the yogurt was thought through and considered.
