Sexy, Sustainable Shoes: Searching for my Shoe-topia

I think I’m like a lot of people who want to make good purchasing choices. I want to make good choices, but it’s… hard.

It sometimes seems like the consumer world is designed to make us make bad choices. Lack of labeling, easy access to crap products, profits over people….

To top off my conundrum, I’m a vegetarian. While I’m not a vegan, I personally don’t feel that I can feel good about not eating a burger all the while sporting leather boots. It may have taken me a while to make that connection, but here I am. Yet as a tree-hugger and earth lover I have to be mindful of the synthetics that go into making my “animal-friendly” products.

Because the conundrum has been so confounding, my decision for a long time has been to not make any decision.

But, I’ve learned, not making a decision does not lead to making a good decision when the purchasing time comes. In my experience, it has lead to making a bad decision in a crunch time. The purpose of this blog series is to invest time into finding the shoe-lution to my footwear dilemma.

​​How do you find sustainable shoes for all of life's events?

Animal lovers and tree huggers do go to black tie events. They also attend business meetings and they go on fancy dates.

If we expect conscious consumerism to grow amongst the masses and help save humanity from itself, we must have a wide choice of footwear to allow us to step into all of life's occasions. 

​Here’s what I’m looking for in the perfect sexy, sustainable shoe:

​Sustainability: The ideal shoe would replant itself when harvested and biodegrade (or would be edible).

Cruelty free: I’ve seen too many documentaries. We’ll just leave it there.

Eco-friendly: Saving animals becomes a moot point if we destroy the planet in the process.

Fashionable and occasion appropriate: Sometimes my look calls for a sexy shoe; sometimes a casual one.  Most times, I want my hippie sensibilities to be hidden inside my heart and not on my sleeve (or on my foot).
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People-friendly: Goes without saying…

While some criteria are often sacrificed for others, I’m looking for a real solution – I’m searching for my shoe-topia. 

I'm currently researching and connecting with brands, and I'm open to suggestions and commentary...

What are your Shoe-utions? Please let us know - and post your links - in the comments section!